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Contro ogni previsione: uno scontro navale nel Mediterraneo moderno... 535

Venice and is now preserved in the Spanish archives) pointed to a sim-
ilar issue in more detail: new galleys were getting built for the campaign;
and, during the process, Admiral Cafer Pasha was enlisting the support
of a Morisco from Sevilla, named Antonio de Ávalos (de Abalos). Anto-
nio’s specific task at the shipyard was equipping the Ottoman galleys
with petards, ladders and fireworks (petardos, y escalas, y fuegos artifi-
ciales), an issue that will be addressed later on in more detail.
31
The subsequent lines of the same news (dated 12 March 1633) con-
vey the information that the Ottomans also asked for the help of the
Barbary States for the approaching campaign. Galliots (small galleys)
from Biserta in Tunisia and galleys from Algiers were commanded to
gather at Navarino . Ottoman documentation similarly reveals that
32
Cafer Pasha sent Ibrahim, the superintendent of the shipyard (tersane
emini), with twenty seven robes of honour in January 1633 to Tripoli,
Algiers and Tunisia . The leaders of the Barbary States were thus called
33
on to contribute to the Ottoman naval campaign during the summer.
Ottoman fiscal evidence regarding the imperial shipyard for 1633
further highlights the state of affairs in the Ottoman navy. Drawing on
a certain shipyard register (Boa, Mad.d 981), Idris Bostan has called
attention to the construction and repair of forty one vessels for that
specific year . The baştarda (It. bastarda, a very large galley) built for
34
Cafer Pasha was a gigantic structure for which more than three hun-
dred and sixty workers exerted effort. Approximately five hundred and
forty personnel serving as the crew of this vessel outnumbered the
personnel of the remaining bastarda class ships by almost two hun-
dred and fifty people . Including the crews of a variety of smaller ves-
35
sels along with the soldiers fighting on board, almost ten thousand
people must have been serving in the Ottoman navy in 1633.
Admiral Cafer’s bastarda was launched, as an Ottoman protocol reg-
ister attests, on 3 June 1633 . The total of 37 robes of honour distrib-
36
uted to Admiral Cafer Pasha and the high-ranking officers of the navy
during the hand-kissing ceremony with Sultan Murad IV on 8 June sig-
nified that the fleet could now depart from the imperial capital .
37
Two days later, the imperial fleet officially left Istanbul, while 36
people including the grand admiral, the superintendent of the imperial

31 Ags, Estado, Leg. 3591-136. Venice, 23 April 1633, f. 417r (accessed on
07.10.2023: http://pares.mcu.es/ParesBusquedas20/catalogo/description/368
0815?nm).
32 Ags, Estado, Leg. 3591-136. Venice, 23 April 1633, f. 417r.
33 Boa, Mad.d, 3987, p. 53.
34 I. Bostan, Osmanlı Bahriye Teşkilatı: XVII. Yüzyılda Tersane-i Amire, Türk
Tarih Kurumu, Ankara, 1992, p. 196.
35 Boa, Mad.d, 981, pp. 23, 27.
36 Boa, KK.d 667M, p. 82.
37 Boa, KK.d 667M, p. 85.

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