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.

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.

[1][2] Necm-i Şevket, meaning "Star of Majesty",[3] was originally ordered by the Khedivate of Egypt in 1866 from the French Forges et Chantiers de la Gironde shipyard in Bordeaux under the name Muzaffer.

Upon completion, Necm-i Şevket and the other ironclads then being built in Britain and France were sent to Crete to assist in stabilizing the island in the aftermath of the Cretan Revolt of 1866–1869.

During this period, the Ottoman fleet, under Hobart Pasha, remained largely inactive, with training confined to reading translated British instruction manuals.

[4] 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.

Hobart Pasha took the fleet to the eastern Black Sea, where he was able to make a more aggressive use of it to support the Ottoman forces battling the Russians in the Caucasus.

Over the course of the war, Russian torpedo boats made several attacks on the vessels stationed in Batumi, but Necm-i Şevket was not damaged in any of them.

The British naval attaché 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.

[15] The Ottomans inspected the fleet and found that almost all of the vessels, including Necm-i Şevket, to be completely unfit for combat against the Greek Navy.

In April and May, the ship escorted troopships transporting infantry from western Anatolia to Gelibolu, and while conducting these operations, she took part in gunnery exercises.

[17] On 30 October 1912, during the First Balkan War, Necm-i Şevket was reactivated to stop the Bulgarian advance against the Ottoman defenders at Çatalca.

The two ships, joined by the pre-dreadnought battleships Barbaros Hayreddin and Turgut Reis and the modernized Mesudiye and Asar-i Tevfik, were towed to Büyükçekmece, where they remained from 15 to 20 November, though they made little contact with Bulgarian forces.