Among the more powerful of Ottoman ironclads, the Navy decided to keep the ship out of the action during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 to preserve the vessel.

[1][2] The ship was powered by a single horizontal compound steam engine which drove one screw propeller.

Steam was provided by six coal-fired box boilers that were trunked into a single, retractable funnel amidships.

She began sea trials on 27 June 1865, by which time she had been renamed Osmaniye for Sultan Osman I, and she was commissioned into the Ottoman fleet in November that year.

[1][3] 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.

[7] The wooden warships of the Mediterranean Fleet sortied in April 1877 to patrol the coast of Albania, but Osmaniye and the rest of the ironclads remained in Souda Bay.

[2] The annual summer cruises to the Bosporus ended and the ships rarely left the Golden Horn.

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.

[2] In 1885–1886, the navy conducted experiments with converting Krupp breeck-loading fortress guns for use aboard Osmaniye.

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.

The Ottomans inspected the fleet and found that almost all of the vessels, including Osmaniye, to be completely unfit for combat against the Greek Navy, which possessed the three modern Hydra-class ironclads.

With no possibility left to use the fleet in an active way, the Navy withdrew Osmaniye from service and removed her guns.