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Contro ogni previsione: uno scontro navale nel Mediterraneo moderno... 529

The Eastern Mediterranean ports under Ottoman rule were likewise
exposed to this rising interest and the northern invasion of the Levan-
tine cities took start with the Ottoman granting of capitulations to the
English (in 1580) and Dutch (in 1612). Accordingly, Dutch and Eng-
lish trade vessels boosted their commercial traffic with the Ottoman
ports in a more organised and intensive fashion beginning in the early
years of the seventeenth century.
For the Ottoman navy, then, coming across English and Dutch
ships during its yearly patrols was only normal. These patrolling na-
vies were made up of two separate parts: first was the set of central
pieces that were constantly prepared or repaired in the imperial ship-
yard (tersane-i amire) in Istanbul. They would be the ones to start the
campaigns at the command of the grand admiral each year. The sec-
ond group was that of the provincial contribution: county governors
(sancak beyis) from a large area covering all the way from the Sea of
Marmara to the Peloponnesus (such as Negroponte, Lepanto, Kocaeli,
Lesbos and Rhodes among others) contributed to the imperial navy
with at least one vessel each, making up a flotilla of fifteen to twenty
ships .
11
These county governors, as a quick overview of their geographical
locations on a map would reveal, had an understandable facility with
seaborne affairs and, hence, were also named as the derya beyis (lit-
erally, lords of the sea), the governor of Rhodes being the most pres-
tigious among them . Including them, the Ottoman patrol fleet in the
12
Mediterranean reached up to a total of seventy to eighty pieces each
year. Even though its size was far below the sixteenth century levels
(when hundreds of galleys used to face each other), the situation was
not considerably different from the Western Mediterranean. The so-
called «Atlantic orientation» of Spain corresponded to a decrease in the
size of the Spanish navy in the Mediterranean: Philip III’s squadron of
Spanish galleys, for instance, was reduced to 12 in the early seven-
teenth century, too .
13

11 O. Özkan, Erken Modern Dönem Akdeniz Hâkimiyeti ve Osmanlı Deniz Gücü
(1578-1645), İstanbul 29 Mayıs Üniversitesi, Unpublished MA Thesis, 2016, p. 46.
12 C. Isom-Verhaaren, The Sultan’s Fleet, p. 102.
13 I.A.A. Thompson, Las galeras en la politica militar espanola en el Medi-
terráneo durante el siglo XVI, «Manuscrits», 24, (2006), pp. 95-124, especially pp.
114-115; D. Goodman, Armadas in an Age of Scarce Resources: Struggling to Main-
tain the Fleet in Seventeenth-century Spain, «Journal of European Economic His-
tory» (1999-1), pp. 49-76; M.A. Bunes Ibarra, La defensa de la cristiandad; las
armadas en el mediterráneo en la edad moderna, «Cuadernos de Historia Moderna»,
Anejo V, (2006), pp. 77-99, p. 96.

Mediterranea - ricerche storiche - Anno XX - Dicembre 2023
ISSN 1824-3010 (stampa) ISSN 1828-230X (online)