The story of an Ottoman sultan’s quest for technological advancement: for which he turned to submarines.

Abdülhamid identifies a problem

Sultan Abdülhamid II (the last Turkish sultan with absolute powers), who reigned from 1876 until 1909 (when he was deposed), was very aware of the technological shortcomings of the Ottoman Empire. At the time, foreign powers were progressing in leaps and bounds. Abdülhamid could see this from news articles, as well as from his ambassadors’ reports.

Sending promising young students abroad for training did not appeal to him. The young people would learn ‘bad ways’ in the decadent West. They would either come back arrogant and disrespectful, or they would not come back at all. His idea was therefore to kickstart the Ottoman technical revolution at home. For this he needed the leadership of an inspirational model figure whom he could entice to come and work in the Empire. But his first idea was not submarines.

the first attempt at a solution

According to his biographer, Recep Hikmet Kırımlı, Abdülhamid’s first pick was Thomas Edison, the man who had tamed electricity and given light to the world. An official invitation was duly sent out, with an undertaking to provide funds that were twenty times as much as Edison could command in the US. But answer came there none. 

The Sultan turns to an english parson

Shortly afterwards, the Sultan learned, possibly from his Navy Minister Admiral Bozcaadalı Hasan Hüsnü Paşa, that in around 1885 the Greek government had bought a submarine. This was a stealthy craft that could patrol the seas undetected. And in the Sultan’s mind, this suggested that it could deter any hostile attempts by the Russians to find an opening into the Mediterranean. Submarines were a novelty at the time and very much in the experimental phase. The one mentioned above was built in Sweden to the design of an Englishman, the Rev. George Garrett, curate of Moss Side in Manchester. And it was directly to Garrett that the Sultan applied.

George Garrett and his inventions

It was possibly through the pressure of family tradition that Garrett had joined the Church. He clearly preferred engineering to the care of his flock. He had been dabbling in submarines since the late 1870s and had made trials in the Liverpool area with mixed success. His contraptions (there were three of them, nicknamed ‘the curate’s egg’ because of their shape) were steam-powered. The last one did not live up to its name, Resurgam (‘I will rise again’), because it foundered off Birkenhead en route to Portsmouth to impress the Royal Navy. It is still there, and a replica can be seen on dry land nearby.  

garrett teams up with the Ottomans

The repeated mishaps did not put George Garrett off. He had managed to team up with a Swedish business (which is how the Greek submarine had come about and how the Sultan came to hear about the Rev. Garrett). The Ottomans commissioned two submarines. Their parts were constructed in Barrow shipyards and then reassembled in the Taşkızak shipyard on the Golden Horn. Trials of the two craft, named after the Sultan and after his father Abdülmecid, were carried out before an extensive display of officialdom. One of submarines got as far as Seraglio Point (roughly where the Topkapı palace is) and successfully fired a torpedo at an old target-vessel, which promptly sank. The Rev. Garrett joined the Ottoman Navy with the rank of Pasha.

Were the Ottoman submarines a success?

Garrett’s design was still experimental, however, and beset by problems of stability and dirigibility when submerged–not to mention the safety of the crew. Later, when Van der Goltz Pasha, the German general who took on the task of modernising the Ottoman army, had a look at the rusting hulls of the two submarines, he declared them useless and had them scrapped. 

And what became of George Garrett?

As for the Rev. Garrett, things went from bad to worse. There proved to be no opening for him in Istanbul, the Church would not have him back, and he eventually emigrated to America, where he died penniless after a string of ill-advised ventures.

By Paola Pugsley. Her latest book, Blue Guide Mediterranean Turkey, is available in digital and print-on-demand format.