Cretan Revolt
The Balkan crisis that started with the Serbo-Bulgarian War, coupled with Ottoman naval expansion in the 1860s and 1870s, prompted the Greek Navy to begin a rearmament program. In addition, the Greek fleet had proved to be too weak to effectively challenge Ottoman naval power during the 1866 Cretan Revolt. In 1885, Greece ordered three new ironclads of the "Hydra" class. The ships were ordered from the Graville and St. Nazaire shipyards in France during the premiership of Charilaos Trikoupis.