page_title: Greek battleship Salamis
section_title: Construction and cancellation
hierarchical_section_title: Greek battleship Salamis / Construction and cancellation
context_page_description: Salamis was a partially constructed capital ship, referred to as either a dreadnought battleship or battlecruiser, that was ordered for the Greek Navy from the AG Vulcan shipyard in Hamburg, Germany, in 1912. She was ordered as part of a Greek naval rearmament program meant to modernize the fleet, in response to Ottoman naval expansion after the Greco-Turkish War of 1897. Salamis and several other battleships—none of which were delivered to either navy—represented the culmination of a naval arms race between the two countries that had significant effects on the First Balkan War and World War I.
  The design for Salamis was revised several times during the construction process, in part due to Ottoman acquisitions. Early drafts of the vessel called for a displacement of 13,500 long tons, with an armament of six 14-inch guns in three twin-gun turrets. The final version of the design was significantly larger, at 19,500 long tons, with an armament of eight 14-inch guns in four turrets. The ship was to have had a top speed of 23 knots, higher than that of other battleships of the period.
  Work began on the keel on 23 July 1913, and the hull was launched on 11 November 1914.
context_section_description: The keel for Salamis was laid down on 23 July 1913. The naval balance of power in the Aegean, however, was soon to change. The Brazilian Navy put their third dreadnought (Rio de Janeiro) up for sale in October 1913, and they found no shortage of countries interested in acquiring it, including Russia, Italy, Greece, and the Ottoman Empire. The British and French were also highly involved, given their interests in the Mediterranean; in November, the French agreed to back Greece with a large loan as a way of preventing Italy from acquiring the ship. Moreover, the Greek consul general in Britain claimed that the Bank of England was prepared to advance all the money needed to purchase the ship as soon as a French loan was guaranteed. Arrangements for all this took quite some time, however, and at the end of December, the Ottomans were able to secure Rio de Janeiro with a private loan from a French bank.
  The purchase caused a panic in Greece, as the balance of naval power would shift to the Ottomans in the near future. The Greek government pressed AG Vulcan to finish Salamis as quickly as possible, but she could not be completed before mid-1915, by which time both of the new Ottoman battleships would have been delivered. The Greeks ordered two dreadnoughts from French yards, slightly modified versions of the French Bretagne-class battleship; the first, Vasilefs Konstantinos, was laid down on 12 June 1914. As a stopgap measure, they purchased a pair of pre-dreadnought battleships from the United States: Mississippi and Idaho, which became Kilkis and Lemnos, respectively. Kerr criticized this purchase as "penny-wise and pound-foolish" for ships that were "entirely useless for war", carrying a price that could have paid for a brand-new dreadnought.
  The outbreak of World War I in July 1914 drastically altered the situation; the British Government declared a naval blockade of Germany in August after it entered the war. The blockade meant that the guns could not be delivered, but the ship was nevertheless launched on 11 November 1914. With no possibility of arming the ship, work was halted on 31 December 1914. In addition, manpower shortages created by the war, along with the redirection of steel production to the needs of the Army, meant that less critical projects could not be completed, especially since other warships were nearing completion and could be finished much more quickly. By this time Greece had paid AG Vulcan only £450,000. Bethlehem refused to send the main battery guns to Greece. The 14-inch guns were instead sold to the British, who used them to arm the four Abercrombie-class monitors.
  The wartime activities of the ship are unclear. According to a postwar report written for the Proceedings of the United States Naval Institute, the incomplete vessel was towed to Kiel, where she was used as a barracks ship. The modern naval historian René Greger states that the incomplete hull never left Hamburg. Some contemporary observers believed the ship had been completed for service with the German Navy, and British Admiral John Jellicoe, the commander of the Grand Fleet, received intelligence that the ship might have been in service by 1916. Other observers, such as Barnett, pointed to the difficulty the German Navy would have had in rearming the ship with German guns, given the fact that Germany possessed no designs for naval guns of that caliber or mountings suitable for use aboard Salamis. He regarded the claim that she had been put into service "doubtful". Barnett's assessment was correct; a substantial rebuilding of the ship's barbette structures would have been required to accommodate German guns, and since guns available for naval use were not easily available owing to the needs of the German Army, work was directed toward German vessels under construction like the battlecruiser Hindenburg. The British realized the rumor was false when the ship did not appear at the Battle of Jutland on 31 May – 1 June 1916.
  Regardless of the ship's wartime disposition, however, Proceedings noted in 1920 that it was "improbable" that con
caption: Unfinished battleship Salamis (far right) in Hamburg
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