The naval Battle of Preveza took place on 28 September 1538 near Preveza in northwestern Greece between an Ottoman fleet and that of a Christian alliance assembled by Pope Paul III.
In 1537, commanding a large Ottoman fleet, Hayreddin Barbarossa captured a number of Aegean and Ionian islands belonging to the Republic of Venice, namely Syros, Aegina, Ios, Paros, Tinos, Karpathos, Kasos and Naxos, thus annexing the Duchy of Naxos to the Ottoman Empire. He then besieged the Venetian stronghold of Corfu and ravaged the Spanish-held Calabrian coast in southern Italy.
In the face of this threat, Pope Paul III succeeded in February 1538 in assembling a ’’Holy League’’, comprising the Papacy, Spain, the Republic of Genoa, the Republic of Venice and the Knights of Malta, to confront Barbarossa.
112 galleys,
50 galleons,
140 barques,
60,000 soldiers.[1][2]122 galleys and galliots,
12,000 soldiers.[1][2]
Ottoman decisive victory
Operations in the Indian Ocean and the final conquests in North Africa
In the meantime, the Ottoman Indian Ocean Fleet, based in Suez and Basra, defeated the Portuguese forces on several occasions near the Arabian peninsula, conquering Aden and Yemen (1538–1539) which were important Portuguese ports, along with Jeddah, Djibouti and Hijaz on the Red Sea coast.
In 1565 the Sultanate of Aceh in Sumatra (Indonesia) declared allegiance to the Ottoman Empire, and in 1569 the Ottoman fleet of Kurtoğlu Hızır Reis sailed to new ports such as Debal, Surat, Janjira and finally set foot on Aceh with a well-equipped fleet of 22 ships, which marked the easternmost Ottoman territorial expansion.
The Ottoman naval victory at the Battle of Preveza in 1538 and the Battle of Djerba in 1560 ensured the Ottoman supremacy in the Mediterranean Sea for several decades, until the Ottomans suffered their first ever military defeat at the hands of the Europeans at the Battle of Lepanto (1571). But the defeat at Lepanto, despite being much celebrated in Europe, was only a temporary setback: it could not reverse the Ottoman conquest of Cyprus, and within a year, the Ottomans built an equally large fleet, which in 1574 conquered Tunisia from Spain. This completed the Ottoman conquest of North Africa, following the operations of the Ottoman fleet under Turgut Reis which had earlier conquered Libya (1551); and of the fleet under Salih Reis which had conquered the coasts of Morocco beyond the Strait of Gibraltar in 1553.
Operations in the Atlantic Ocean
Starting from the early 17th century, the Ottoman fleet began to venture into the Atlantic Ocean (earlier, Kemal Reis had sailed to the Canary Islands in 1501, while the fleet of Murat Reis the Elder had captured Lanzarote of the Canary Islands in 1585).[2] In 1617 the Ottoman fleet captured Madeira in the Atlantic Ocean, before raiding Sussex, Plymouth, Devon, Hartland Point, Cornwall and the other counties of western England in August 1625.[2] In 1627 Ottoman naval ships, accompanied by Barbary corsairs under the leadership of Murat Reis the Younger, captured the Isle of Lundy in the Bristol Channel, which served as the main base for Ottoman naval and privateering operations in the North Atlantic for the next five years.[3] They raided the Shetland Islands, Faroe Islands, Denmark-Norway, Iceland and Vestmannaeyjar.[2][4][5] Between 1627 and 1631 the same Ottoman force also raided the coasts of Ireland and Sweden.[2][6][7] Ottoman ships later appeared off the eastern coasts of North America, particularly being sighted at the English colonies like Newfoundland and Virginia.[2]
Black Sea operations
Before the Ottomans, the Seljuq sultan of Rûm, Alaeddin Keykubad I, had formed a Black Sea fleet based in Sinop, which, under the command of Amir Chupan, had conquered parts of the Crimean peninsula and Sugdak on the Sea of Azov between 1220 and 1237.
In the years following their conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the Ottoman Turks had dominated the Mediterranean with their fleets of galleys. In 1475, the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II employed 380 galleys under the command of Gedik Ahmet Pasha, whose fleet conquered the Greek Principality of Theodoro together with the Genoese-administered Crimean port towns of Cembalo, Soldaia, and Caffa ("Kefe" in Turkic languages.)[8] As a result of these conquests, starting from 1478, the Crimean Khanate became a vassal state and protectorate of the Ottoman Empire, which lasted until 1774.
The failure of the Siege of Malta in 1565 and the victory of the Holy League navies over the Ottomans at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 indicated that the pendulum was beginning to swing the other way,[9] but the Black Sea was, for a time, regarded as a "Turkish Lake".[10] For over a hundred years Ottoman naval supremacy in the Black Sea rested on three pillars: the Ottoman Turks controlled the Turkish Straits and the mouth of the Danube; none of the states in the region could muster an effective naval force; and the virtual absence of piracy on the Black Sea.
