Ottoman battleship Abdül Kadir

Abdül Kadir was to have been the Ottoman Navy's first pre-dreadnought battleship.[1] She followed a series of ironclad warships built in the 1860s and 1870s. In 1876, Sultan Murad V was deposed; the Ottoman Navy had played a role in the coup, which installed Abdul Hamid II on the throne. The new sultan was as a result suspicious of the navy, and attempted to reduce its power by withholding funding and ordering no new capital ships over the course of the following decade. By the late 1880s, however, the ships built by his predecessors were rapidly becoming obsolescent,[2] especially compared to foreign designs like the British Royal Sovereign-class battleships.[3]

More importantly, the Greek Navy—a major rival of the Ottoman fleet—had ordered three Hydra class ironclad battleships in 1885.[4] These ships, though smaller than the older Ottoman ironclads, were kept in a much better state of readiness than the Ottoman vessels, which were left idle in the Sea of Marmara, with little maintenance done.[5] In 1890, the Ottoman government authorized a large construction program that included two battleships based on the 12,500-metric-ton (12,300-long-ton; 13,800-short-ton) French Hoche, along with several cruisers and smaller vessels. The two Hoche-class battleships were not built;[6] instead, a smaller design, to be named Abdül Kadir, was ordered that year.[7] Along with the elderly central battery ironclad Mesudiye, she would have been one of the largest ships in the Ottoman Navy.[8]

Abdül Kadir was laid down at the Imperial Arsenal in Constantinople in October 1892. Rather than use an actual slipway, the builders simply began laying the keel pieces on empty ground near the shipyard, using only a small number of wooden beams to support the structure. The slipway that had been used to build the ironclad Hamidiye was, for some reason, left unused.[9] By 1895, the steel frames for her hull had been erected, but work proceeded very slowly and frequently stopped, primarily due to the chronically tight Ottoman budget.[7] In 1897, for instance, work had been halted for some time, and the contemporary journal The Navy and Army Illustrated predicted that the ship would not be finished.[5] Similar large-scale building projects during this period also fell apart due to lack of funds; a major construction program launched in the aftermath of the Ottoman Navy's poor performance in the Greco-Turkish War of 1897 stalled after funds could not be appropriated for the new ships. By 1906, when work on Abdül Kadir stopped for the last time, the hull had been only partially plated. By this time, the blocks that supported the hull during construction had shifted, which destroyed the keel. As a result, the unfinished ship was broken up on the slipway in 1909.[2][7]

• List of battleships of the Ottoman Empire
• List of naval steamships of the Ottoman Empire

• Gardiner, Robert, ed. (1979). Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1860–1905. London: Conway Maritime Press. ISBN 978-0-85177-133-5.
• Gardiner, Robert & Gray, Randal, eds. (1985). Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1906–1921. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-0-87021-907-8.
• Keltie, J. Scott & Renwick, I. A. P., eds. (1902). The Statesman's Yearbook. Vol. 39. London: The Macmillan Company.
• Langensiepen, Bernd & Güleryüz, Ahmet (1995). The Ottoman Steam Navy 1828–1923. London: Conway Maritime Press. ISBN 978-0-85177-610-1.
• Robinson, Charles N., ed. (1897). "The Fleets of the Powers in the Mediterranean". Navy and Army Illustrated. London: Hudson & Kearnes. III: 186–187. OCLC 7489254.
• Sturton, Ian. "Through British Eyes: Constantinople Dockyard, the Ottoman Navy, and the Last Ironclad, 1876–1909". Warship International. Toledo: International Naval Research Organization. 57 (2). ISSN 0043-0374.