As a result, she was in very poor condition by the late 1890s, which prompted a major reconstruction of her into a pre-dreadnought design type vessel in Genoa.

A battery of these guns, named Mesudiye in honor of the ship, helped to sink the French battleship Bouvet in March 1915.

[1] Despite the shortage of funds, by the late 1870s, the Ottomans had acquired a fleet of thirteen large ironclads and nine smaller armored warships.

[2] Early in the ship's career, the Ottoman ironclad fleet was activated every summer for short cruises from the Golden Horn to the Bosporus to ensure their propulsion systems were in operable condition.

[9] In September 1876, Mesudiye became the flagship of the Ottoman Black Sea Squadron, though she did not see action in the Russo-Turkish War that broke out in April 1877.

[10] After the Ottoman defeat, the fleet was laid up at the Golden Horn and left largely unattended for the following twenty years.

The British naval attache to the Ottoman Empire at the time estimated that the Imperial Arsenal would take six months to get just five of the ironclads ready to go to sea.

During a period of tension with Greece in 1886, the fleet was brought to full crews and the ships were prepared to go to sea, but none actually left the Golden Horn, and they were quickly laid up again.

Starting in July 1911, Mesudiye joined the two pre-dreadnoughts Barbaros Hayreddin and Turgut Reis, four destroyers, and a torpedo boat for a series of exercises that culminated in the routine summer cruise to Beirut.

[16] Mesudiye was thereafter assigned to the Reserve Division, which also included the rebuilt ironclad Asar-i Tevfik and the torpedo cruiser Berk-i Satvet.

At the time, Mesudiye was moored off Büyükdere, a neighborhood in Constantinople, with the torpedo boats Hamidâbad and Kütahya, stationed as a guard ship.

In December, the Ottoman fleet was reorganized, with Mesudiye joining the newly formed Battleship Division, under the command of Ramiz Naman Bey.

[18][20] The ships took part in the Battle of Elli, the first Ottoman surface action involving major warships since the Russo-Turkish War, on 16 December 1912.

[21] The Ottoman fleet sortied from the Dardanelles at 9:30; the smaller craft remained at the mouth of the straits while the battleships sailed north, hugging the coast.

The Greek flotilla, which included the armored cruiser Georgios Averof and three Hydra-class ironclads, sailing from the island of Lemnos, altered course to the northeast to block the advance of the Ottoman battleships.

[23] At 9:50 and under heavy pressure from the Greek fleet, the Ottoman ships completed a 16-point turn (180°), which reversed their course, and headed for the safety of the straits.

[23] In late December, the Ottomans began a campaign of raids and patrols in the Aegean Sea against the islands that had been recently conquered by the Greeks.

The Ottoman Army began planning to make a landing on Tenedos in late December, which had been captured by Greece earlier in the war.

Mesudiye and the rest of the Battleship Division sortied from the Dardanelles on the morning of 4 January 1913, but the operation was called off after the Greek fleet appeared.

Eight days later, another fleet operation began, which produced the Battle of Lemnos, the second major naval engagement of the war.

[22] The Ottoman fleet departed the Dardanelles at 8:20 on the morning of 18 January, and sailed toward the island of Lemnos at a speed of 11 knots (20 km/h; 13 mph).

At around that time, Mesudiye took a serious hit that disabled three of her 150 mm guns; this damage, coupled with boiler trouble, led the Ottoman commander to detach the ship and send her back to port.

[25] On 5 February, Mesudiye supported operations off Şarköy in the Sea of Marmara, bombarding Bulgarian troops that had occupied the town.

The Ottoman fleet then spent the remaining months of the war in port, until the armistice ended the conflict in April.

In the meantime, B11 successfully passed back through the Dardanelles and returned to port; Holbrook was awarded the Victoria Cross for sinking Mesudiye.

[31] These guns played a role in the sinking of the French battleship Bouvet on 18 March 1915, having hit the ship eight times—one of which disabled her forward turret[32]—before she struck a mine and sank with very heavy loss of life.