HMS Erin (1911): The Battleship Churchill Stole From the Ottoman Navy

Built for the Sultan

HMS Erin did not begin her life as a British ship at all. She was ordered by the Ottoman Empire from Vickers on 8 June 1911, initially named Reşad V in honour of Sultan Mehmed V, before being renamed Reşadiye during construction. Her design was derived from the British King George V class but incorporated the heavier 6-inch secondary armament of the newer Iron Duke class, making her a genuinely formidable dreadnought by the standards of 1914, one the Ottoman government and public alike had invested considerable pride, and considerable money, in acquiring, with part of the cost raised through public donations across the empire.

Construction began at Vickers' yard in Barrow-in-Furness on 6 December 1911, though work was suspended in late 1912 during the Balkan Wars before resuming in May 1913. She was launched on 3 September 1913 and completed in August 1914, at a total cost of around £2.5 million, just as Europe stood on the brink of war. She displaced 22,780 tons, measured 559 feet 6 inches in length, and carried ten 13.5-inch guns in five twin turrets, sixteen 6-inch guns and four torpedo tubes, driven by Parsons turbines producing 26,500 shaft horsepower for a top speed of 21 knots, a genuinely powerful addition to any navy fortunate enough to end up with her.

Seized Days Before War

Following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28 June 1914, Britain postponed delivery of the completed battleship on 21 July, despite the Ottoman government having completed payment in full and its official delegation having already arrived in Britain to take formal possession. Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, ordered the Royal Navy to detain the ship outright on 29 July, and soldiers of the Sherwood Foresters Regiment formally seized her on 31 July, renaming her HMS Erin, an old poetic name for Ireland.

Churchill's justification was strategic: he wanted to augment the Royal Navy's margin of superiority over the German High Seas Fleet at a moment of maximum tension, and to ensure that a powerful, nearly complete dreadnought did not end up, by any means, in German hands instead. The seizure generated genuine and lasting ill will across the Ottoman Empire, where the ship had been a matter of considerable public pride and had been partly funded by ordinary citizens' donations, a grievance that stung all the more given how directly it touched national prestige. Historians note, however, that there is no clear evidence the seizure itself played a decisive part in the Ottoman government's later decision to enter the war on the side of the Central Powers, though it certainly did nothing to help relations at an already fraught moment.

Into the Grand Fleet

HMS Erin, under the command of Captain Victor Stanley, joined the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow on 5 September 1914, assigned to the Fourth Battle Squadron under Admiral John Jellicoe's overall command. She spent 1914 and 1915 on the routine, unglamorous but essential work of North Sea patrols, training exercises and gunnery drills that made up the bulk of the Grand Fleet's activity through the war's early years, transferring to the Second Battle Squadron sometime between September and December 1915.

The Only Battleship Silent at Jutland

HMS Erin took part in the Battle of Jutland on 31 May 1916, the largest clash of battleships in history, positioned fourth from the head of the battle line as Jellicoe deployed his fleet into action. For all the scale of the engagement, her own participation proved almost anticlimactic: opportunities to open fire during the chaotic, fog-bound battle were rare for a ship in her position in the line, and she managed to fire only six shells from her secondary 6-inch armament across the entire action. HMS Erin holds the rather unusual distinction of being the only British battleship present at Jutland not to fire her main guns at all, a genuinely striking footnote for a ship that had, only two years earlier, been the pride of the Ottoman fleet.

HMS Erin also took part in the inconclusive Action of 19 August 1916, after which Admiral Jellicoe grew considerably more cautious about committing the Grand Fleet to further major operations, and HMS Erin resumed patrol and training duties for the remainder of the war. She was present at Rosyth on 21 November 1918 to witness the surrender of the German High Seas Fleet, a suitably symbolic final wartime moment for a ship whose own career had begun as someone else's national pride entirely.

Postwar Service and the End

Captain Herbert Richmond took command of HMS Erin on 1 January 1919, and by May that year she had transferred to the 3rd Battle Squadron of the Home Fleet. She moved to the Nore in October 1919 and became a gunnery training ship by February 1920, also serving as flagship of Rear-Admiral Vivian Bernard, commanding the Reserve Fleet at the Nore, through to December 1920, with a refit at Devonport Dockyard that July and August.

The Royal Navy had originally intended to retain HMS Erin as a training ship under the terms of the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty, which sharply limited the number of capital ships each major power could keep, but this role was ultimately reassigned to HMS Thunderer instead. HMS Erin was listed for disposal in May 1922, sold to the shipbreaking firm Cox and Danks on 19 December 1922, and broken up at Queenborough in 1923, closing out the career of a battleship whose entire existence had been shaped by a single, controversial decision made in the last frantic days before the First World War began.