Battle of Sinop, 1853: the Ottoman squadron burned at anchor

In the autumn of 1853 the Ottoman Empire and Russia were at war, in the conflict that grew into the Crimean War. The Ottoman navy sent a squadron into the Black Sea to keep watch on the Russian fleet. According to the historian Fırat Küskü of Sinop University, whose 2026 study draws on Ottoman archives and the British press, its commanders, Patrona Osman Pasha and Riyale Hüseyin Pasha, were authorized to open fire on the enemy without waiting to be attacked.²

A sudden storm drove the squadron into the harbor of Sinop. Damaged by the weather, it stayed there instead of putting back to sea, which Küskü calls a strategic mistake that cost the whole squadron. Sinop was the only shipyard on the Black Sea apart from Istanbul, and the British press noted that its defenses had not been repaired in forty years.³

Two unequal squadrons

Küskü lists twelve Ottoman ships at Sinop, from a report published in the Freeman's Journal: seven frigates, among them the Egyptian Dimyad, corvettes, transports and two steamers, with 434 guns and about 4,490 men between them. Against them came six Russian ships of the line, the Imperatritsa Maria, Veliky Knyaz Konstantin, Chesma, Paris, Tri Sviatitelia and Rostislav, with frigates and steamers in support. Their guns fired explosive shells of up to 68 pounds.⁴

British and French envoys had warned the Porte early in November that operations in the Black Sea were too risky while the stronger Russian fleet was at sea. British reports said Osman Pasha rejected advice to break out and fight in open water, reasoning that his ships were storm damaged, his men exhausted and the Russians unlikely to be reinforced.⁵

Out of the fog

Nakhimov had scouted the harbor and found the Ottoman ships drawn up in a crescent along the shore, with five batteries behind them. Admiral Novosilsky joined him from Sevastopol, and Nakhimov ordered an attack in two columns: his own on the right, flying his flag in the Imperatritsa Maria, and Novosilsky's on the left. On the morning of 30 November, in a light wind, the Russian ships stood in under full sail. Fog and rain were so thick, Küskü writes, that they could not be seen at half a mile.⁶

The fight began around noon. Some British papers claimed the Russians had approached under British colors, which Küskü treats as possible but unproven; all accounts agree that the fog let them close before the Ottomans could react. The shore batteries did little. In about an hour and a half the Ottoman squadron was destroyed. The Nizamiye blew up with Hüseyin Pasha's flag, other frigates burned or were sunk, and Osman Pasha was taken from his sinking flagship, the Avnillah, wounded and a prisoner.⁷

One ship got away. The steamer Taif, commanded by Yahya Bey, raised steam and ran between the Russian ships posted outside the harbor, chased for hours and hit by seventeen shots. Küskü corrects a long-standing story here: the British officer Adolphus Slade, Müşavir Pasha, was not aboard her. The Taif reached Istanbul with the news.⁸

The toll

By two in the afternoon the Ottoman guns had fallen silent, and the Turkish quarter of the town was burning. At half past two Nakhimov ceased fire and sent an officer ashore under a white flag, but the town's officials had fled to the villages. The British brig Howard, a collier caught in the harbor, burned with the Ottoman ships.⁹

Figures for the dead vary. Mehmet Öz, in the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, puts the Ottoman dead at over 2,000 and the ships sunk at twelve, and from an official document lists seven mosques, two schools, 247 houses and 170 shops burned in the town, with five Muslim and sixteen Christian civilians killed. Küskü cites Enver Ziya Karal for more than half of a crew of about 4,000 killed, and İsmail Hami Danişmend for over 2,500 houses damaged.¹⁰

The battle also mattered in naval history. Britannica's article on naval warfare notes that the shells fired at Sinope compelled navies to sheathe their hulls in iron, the first step toward all-metal warships.¹¹ › Battle of Kinburn, 1855

The road to war

News reached Britain on 12 December. The papers called it the "Massacre of Sinope", Küskü counts close to three thousand reports in three months, and they attacked their own government for letting an ally be destroyed while the British and French fleets lay at Istanbul. Some called for a strike on Sevastopol itself. In his reading the outcry pushed Britain, with France, into the war.¹²

For Sinop the cost was lasting. A cemetery for the dead was walled in with a marble inscription telling of the battle, and a Martyrs' Fountain was built near the shipyard. Trade moved to Samsun and Trabzon, and the town never regained its place on the Black Sea.¹³