page_title: HMS Erin
section_title: Construction and career
hierarchical_section_title: HMS Erin / Construction and career
caption_attribution_description: Ottoman battleship Reşadiye at her launching in 1913.
context_page_description: HMS Erin was a dreadnought battleship of the Royal Navy, originally ordered by the Ottoman government from the British Vickers Company. The ship was to have been named Reşadiye when she entered service with the Ottoman Navy. The Reşadiye class was designed to be at least the equal of any other ship afloat or under construction. When the First World War began in August 1914, Reşadiye was nearly complete and was seized at the orders of Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty to keep her in British hands and prevent her from being used by Germany or German allies. There is no evidence that the seizure played any part in the Ottoman government declaring war on Britain and the Entente Cordiale.
  Aside from a minor role in the Battle of Jutland in May 1916 and the inconclusive Action of 19 August the same year, Erin's service during the war generally consisted of routine patrols and training in the North Sea. The ship was deemed obsolete after the war; she was reduced to reserve and used as a training ship. Erin served as the flagship of the reserve fleet at the Nore for most of 1920. She was sold for scrap in 1922 and broken up the following year.
context_section_description: Erin originally was ordered by the Ottoman Empire on 8 June 1911, at an estimated cost of £2,500,000, with the name of Reşad V in honour of Mehmed V Reşâd, the ruling Ottoman Sultan, but was renamed Reşadiye during construction. She was laid down at the Vickers shipyard in Barrow-in-Furness on 6 December 1911 with yard number 425, but construction was suspended in late 1912 during the Balkan Wars and resumed in May 1913. The ship was launched on 3 September and completed in August 1914. After the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28 June, the British postponed delivery of Reşadiye on 21 July, despite the completion of payments and the arrival of the Ottoman delegation to collect Reşadiye and another dreadnought battleship, Sultan Osman I, after their sea trials. The First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill ordered the Royal Navy to detain the ships on 29 July and prevent Ottoman naval personnel from boarding them; two days later, British sailors formally seized them and Reşadiye was renamed Erin, a poetical name for Ireland. He did this on his own initiative to augment the Royal Navy's margin of superiority over the German High Seas Fleet and to prevent them from being acquired by Germany or its allies.
  The takeover caused considerable ill will in the Ottoman Empire, where public subscriptions had partially funded the ships. When the Ottoman government had been in a financial deadlock over the budget of the battleships, donations for the Ottoman Navy had come in from taverns, cafés, schools and markets, and large donations were rewarded with a "Navy Donation Medal". The seizure, and the gift of the German battlecruiser Goeben to the Ottomans, influenced public opinion in the Empire to turn away from Britain. Historian David Fromkin has speculated that the Turks promised to transfer Sultan Osman I to the Germans in exchange for signing a secret defensive alliance on 1 August. Despite the alliance, the Ottoman government was intent on remaining neutral until Russian disasters during the invasion of East Prussia in September persuaded Enver Pasha and Djemal Pasha, the Ministers of War and of the Marine, respectively, that the time was ripe to exploit Russian weakness. Unbeknownst to any of the other members of the government, Enver and Djemal authorized Vice Admiral Wilhelm Souchon, the German commander-in-chief of the Ottoman Navy, to attack Russian ships in the Black Sea in late October under the pretext of defending its warships from Russian attacks. Souchon, frustrated with Ottoman neutrality, took matters into his own hands and bombarded Russian ports in the Black Sea on 29 October as unambiguous evidence of an Ottoman attack and forced the government's hand into joining the war on Germany's side.
caption: Reşadiye being launched, 3 September 1913
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