Ottoman ironclad Asar-i Şevket
Line-drawing of the Asar-i Şevket class | |
| History | |
|---|---|
| Ottoman Empire | |
| Name | Asar-i Şevket |
| Namesake | "Work of God" |
| Ordered | 1866 |
| Builder | Forges et Chantiers de la Gironde |
| Laid down | 1867 |
| Launched | 1868 |
| Commissioned | 3 March 1870 |
| Decommissioned | 1903 |
| Fate | Sold for scrap, 31 July 1909 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class & type | Asar-i Şevket-class ironclad |
| Displacement | 2,047 metric tons (2,015 long tons; 2,256 short tons) |
| Length | 66.4 m (217 ft 10 in) (loa) |
| Beam | 12.9 m (42 ft 4 in) |
| Draft | 5 m (16 ft 5 in) |
| Installed power |
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| Propulsion |
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| Speed | 12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph) |
| Complement | 170 |
| Armament |
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| Armor | |
Asar-i Şevket (Ottoman Turkish: Work of God) was a central battery ship built for the Ottoman Navy in the 1860s. Originally ordered by the Eyalet of Egypt but confiscated by the Ottoman Empire while under construction, the vessel was initially named Kahira. The ship was laid down at the French Forges et Chantiers de la Gironde shipyard in 1867, was launched in 1868, and was commissioned into the Ottoman fleet in March 1870. Asar-i Şevket was armed with a battery of four 178 mm (7 in) Armstrong guns in a central casemate and one 229 mm (9 in) Armstrong gun in a revolving barbette.
The ship saw action in the Russo-Turkish War in 1877–1878, where she supported Ottoman forces in the Caucasus, and later helped to defend the port of Sulina on the Danube. She was laid up for twenty years, until the outbreak of the Greco-Turkish War in 1897, which highlighted the badly deteriorated state of the Ottoman fleet. Asar-i Şevket was not included in the major reconstruction program that saw most of the other ironclads rebuilt after the war, and she was decommissioned in 1903 and broken up for scrap in 1909.