Battle of Cape Gelidonya

The Battle of Cape Gelidonya took place on 14 July 1616 during the Ottoman–Habsburg struggle for the control of the Mediterranean. During its course, a small Spanish fleet owned by Viceroy of Naples Pedro Téllez-Girón, Duke of Osuna, under the command of Francisco de Rivera, was attacked by an Ottoman fleet that vastly outnumbered it while cruising off Cyprus. Despite this, the Spanish ships, mostly galleons, managed to repel the Ottomans, whose fleet consisted mainly of galleys, inflicting heavy losses.

The battle, considered in military historigraphy a «Little Lepanto», became a turning point in Mediterranean naval warfare, where the galleys employed by the Ottoman navy were left obsolete by the heavily armed western roundships, like galleons and naos, increasingly used by Spain and the rest of Christian nations. The victory was further made significant by its closeness to the Ottoman core and the little size of the forces required to defeat the Turk navy. From that point, the technical and strategical distance between the Christian and Muslim navies would only expand over the centuries.