Battle of Cape Celidonia

Battle of Cape Celidonia
Part of Ottoman–Habsburg wars
Spanish galleons fighting off Ottoman galleys. Oil on canvas by Juan de la Corte (1597–1660), Naval Museum of Madrid.
Date 14–16 July 1616 Location Off Cape Celidonia, Anatolian south coast Result Spanish victory
Belligerents
Habsburg Spain	Ottoman Empire
Commanders and leaders
Francisco de Rivera	Bey of Rhodes
Strength
5 galleons 1 patache 1,600 soldiers	55 galleys 12,000 soldiers
Casualties and losses
34 killed 93 wounded	10 galleys sunk 23 galleys damaged 3,200 killed

The Battle of Cape Celidonia took place on 14 July 1616 during the Ottoman–Habsburg struggle for the control of the Mediterranean. During its course, a small Spanish fleet owned by Viceroy of Naples Pedro Téllez-Girón, Duke of Osuna, under the command of Francisco de Rivera y Medina, was attacked by an Ottoman fleet that vastly outnumbered it while cruising off Cyprus. Despite this, the Spanish ships, mostly galleons, managed to repel the Ottomans, whose fleet consisted mainly of galleys, inflicting heavy losses.

The battle, considered in military historigraphy a «Little Lepanto», became a turning point in Mediterranean naval warfare, where the galleys employed by the Ottoman navy were left obsolete by the heavily armed western roundships, like galleons and naos, increasingly used by Spain and the rest of Christian nations. The victory was further made significant by its closeness to the Ottoman core and the little size of the forces required to defeat the Turk navy. From that point, the technical and strategical distance between the Christian and Muslim navies would only expand over the centuries.

Background

In 1616, a royal decree by Philip III banned viceroys from engaging in privateering. The decision obstructed Viceroy of Sicily, the Duke of Osuna, who had achieved an unprecedented success through privateering actions after earning a license for it in 1613, attracting political enmities in the court which had likely influenced Philip's stance. Osuna resorted to bribery to maintain his activities, leading to his appointment as Viceroy of Naples in 1616, but at the same time, he decided to innovate in maritime tactics to maximize the power of the Spanish armada. His first move was to build a fleet of Spanish roundships or sailing ships.

Area of Rivera's cruise.

Mainstream belief at the time was that sailing ships were inferior to the rowing ships commonly used in Mediterranean warfare, as it had been demostrated in events like the Battle of Zonchio, where the Venetian naos had been an easy prey for the agile Ottoman galleys. However, Osuna and his captain Francisco de Rivera y Medina were convinced that western advances in artillery and shipbuilding had reversed the situation. Previously, the Dutch pirate Simon de Dauser, hired by the Regency of Algiers, had built several rudimentary roundships, which had turned out hard to defeat. Dauser then built a dozen of ships for the navy of Tunis in 1612, but Osuna had the port raided and the fleet destroyed before it could become a threat.

The new Spanish fleet, funded by Osuna himself to ease burocracy, was baptized as Las Cinco Llagas ("The Five Holy Wounds"), although in reality it was comprised by six ships at the time. It was composed of 5 galleons and a patache: the 52-gun Concepción, flagship of Rivera; the 34-gun Almirante, commanded by alférez Serrano; the 27-gun Buenaventura, under Don Ínigo de Urquiza; the 34-gun Carretina, commanded by Balmaseda; the 30-gun San Juan Bautista, commanded by Juan Cereceda; and the 14-gun patache Santiago under Gazarra. Osuna selected new crews, with many Basque crewmen among them.

In order to test the fleet's efficienc, Rivera raided the Tunisian port of La Goulette with one of the galleons, and with he sank a Moor vessel and captured three more with minimal casualties, an enormous success that confirmed their impressions. With their best expectations, the Cinco Llagas sailed off on 15 July from the Sicily to Eastern Mediterranean waters, in order to undertake privateering against Ottoman vessels and ports in the area between Cyprus and the region of Çukurova. Aboard the ships, captained again by Rivera, were about 1,600 Spanish soldiers, of whom 1,000 were musketeers.

Previous moves

The Spanish fleet sailed to the island of Cyprus, then under Ottoman rule, where Francisco de Rivera ordered that land be sighted prior to initiating of the cruise. During the mission 16 merchant caramoussals were captured by Rivera's fleet off Cape Celidonia, as well as an English privateer in Famagusta and a large number of minor vessels at sea. In addition, ten warships were sunk or burnt in the port of Salinas, whose defenses were also destroyed by a landing party which suffered no loss. The Ottoman governor of Cyprus, who had been rapidly informed regarding the Spanish activities, called for help from the Ottoman navy. Rivera, warned of the relief force thanks to the capture of a merchant vessel coming from Constantinople, decided to wait for his pursuers off Cape Celidonia in order to return to Sicily with a great victory. A Turkish fleet of 55 galleys with about 275 guns and 12,000 fighting men on board appeared off the cape few days later, on 14 July.

Battle

First day

The battle began at 9 am when the Ottoman galleys moved toward the Spanish ships and opened fire. Previously they had formed up into a huge crescent, designed to encircle the Spanish ships. For their part, in order avoid his ships becoming separated and overwhelmed individually in the light wind conditions, de Rivera ordered deploy rowing boats to tow their ships back into position if necessary, and further ordered to tend chains from side to side to tie the ships together in the worst case. The Concepción stood at the vanguard, being followed by the Carretina, the Almiranta, and the patache Santiago. The other two ships remained on standby.

While the Turks advanced firing at them, Rivera held fire until the Ottoman ships were as close as possible before ordering to return fire to hit them point blank, a tactic known as fuego a la española ("Spanish fire"), a tocapenoles ("with their rigs touching") or a la veneciana ("Venetian fire"). The Spanish also fired with a variety of ammunition, including conventional cannonballs, incendiary balls and chain shots, which made their artillery highly effective. They kept the Turk vessels at bay until sunset, upon which the attackers then withdrew to their initial positions with eight galleys about to sink and many others damaged. After nightfall, the Hispanics lit up lanterns and manintained their fleet together with the help of their boats.

Second day

The attack was resumed the next morning, when, after a night war council, the Ottomans attacked in two groups which separately attempted to capture the Concepción and the Almirante. They managed to close up enough to enter the range of the Spanish muskets, but the Spanish artillery again prevented them to attempt to board the ships. Although they succeeded to throw grappling hooks on the Carretina, the San Juan intruded between them firing with her own artillery, while a squad of galleys attempting to help them was fought off by the Concepción from the other side. Unable to board, the Ottoman artillerymen targeted the sailing ships' rigging in an attempt to render them without means to move, buy after achieving little, the Ottoman force withdrew in the evening with another 10 galleys heeling over.

Compared to the previous day, the Turks had achieved more significant damage, capturing the Concepción's rowing boat and forcing the Hispanics to work during the night to repair the broken rigging. Rivera had also suffered light wounds in his face, and his ships were starting to run off gunpodwer and cannoballs from battling so many enemies, which forced him to distribute their remaining reserves between them. However, the Turk fleet had taken much heavier damage again, returning with thousands of casualties and wounded and half of their galleys damaged. That night a new council of war took place during which the Turks decided to resume the action at dawn.

Third day

The third and last day, after a speech that boosted their morale, the Ottomans attacked with great resolve and managed to grapple the Carretina, but the ships' high sides made it difficult for the Turk janissaries to climb up, leaving them vulnerable to the fire of the Spanish falconets. The Concepción also helped repel them from its side. Meanwhile, more galleys approached Rivera's flagship from the most favorable angle to exploit its blind spot, but the Spanish commander had foreseen such a possibility, ordered that the Santiago move to his ship's bow. The maneuver exposed the Turk galleys to the combined fire, which kept doing severe damage. Fighting continued until midday, when the Spaniards only had gunpowder left for six more hours of battle, but at this point the Turks finally retreated not to return, with another galley sunk, two dismasted, and 17 others severely damaged or heeling over.

In total, the Ottoman armada suffered massive losses, with 10 galleys sunk and another 23 disabled. 1,200 Janissaries and 2,000 sailors and rowers were killed. Rivera also reported hearing two cannon shots in the Turk flagship, which he identified as a signal that the fleet's commander had been either killed or hurt. By comparison, the Spaniards suffered 34 dead and 93 wounded as well as damage to the rigging and hulls of the Concepción and the Santiago, which had to be towed by the other ships to Candia to be repaired. Once rearmed, Rivera headed for Brindisi, where he arrived with 15 of the merchant ships captured and much booty in gold.

Aftermath

For his success, and by the Duke of Osuna's petition, Rivera was promoted to Admiral by King Philip III, who also rewarded him with the habit of the Order of Santiago. The fame granted by the battle came to equate him to Álvaro de Bazán, Marquis of Santa Cruz, another innovator of the Spanish armada, after gaining his own victory in the Battle of Vila Franca do Campo. Some time later the Spanish playwright and poet Don Luís Vélez de Guevara wrote the comedy "El asombro de Turquía y valiente toledano" ("the wonder of Turkey and the courageous Toledoan") to commemorate the battle. The soldiers and sailors of the fleet were also recognized by Osuna, who had arrived to Naples in July, when the Cinco Llagas had already sailed off. In spite of the victory, the Spanish monarchy, characteristically slow in capitalizing on triumphs, denied Osuna's petition of funding new fleet of twelve galleons, and reiterated the ban of privateering, which Osuna continued ignoring.

The resonance of the battle came from the fact that, unlike most naval battles between Christians and Muslims up to the point, the battle had taken place in the maritime center of the Ottoman Empire, and only a handful of ships had been necessary to defeat all the ships the Ottomans had managed to gather in a resonable short notice. With their failure to adapt at these new tactics, the naval Turk threat progressively became limited to their own, reduced privateering actions against merchant trade. The Barbary pirates, however, adapted much better to the new shipbuilding techniques thanks to the presence of Dutch and English captains and crews, remaining a danger for Christian nations.

The victory in Celidonia cemented Spanish hegemony in the central Mediterranean. Less than a month after the battle, Osuna found out the Calabrese renegade Arzan had sailed off from Constantinople with twelve galleys, so he tracked and destroyed them with ten galleys gathered in Sicily and Malta under the command of Íñigo Zapata, who killed the enemy captain. Ottavio d'Aragona, another of Osuna's lieutenants, continued the campaign disguising a Hispanic fleet as Turk ships and bombarding Constantinople. Despite the advantage, Philip III's court continued without making significant moves to establish a long last control on the Mediterranean, whose watch would keep tied to Osuna's initiative and victories. In December, the Duke engaged in an unofficial warfare with the Republic of Venice, an usual ally to the Ottomans, leading Rivera to score a naval win over them in the Battle of Ragusa.

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