Unsinkable Veteran

With the Commodore's pennant fluttering from her yardarm, her khaki sides glistening with new paint, the Yawuz Sultan Selim, flagship and only battle cruiser of the Turkish Navy, steamed into the Golden Horn last week after a trial cruise and battle practice. Two hundred and fifty French engineers and dockyard foremen prepared to leave the comfortable homes they have occupied at Ismid on the Sea of Marmora and go home.

Two years ago that most useful of naval registers, Jane's Fighting Ships, commented pithily on the Yawuz Sultan Selim: "Present condition is very bad, as all but two of her 24 boilers are out of action, and there are two unrepaired holes in hull below water line . . . has probably had more narrow escapes from destruction than any other dreadnought or battle cruiser in existence."

In 1911 the Yawuz Sultan Selim slid down the ways of the Hamburg ship- builders Blohm & Voss (builders of the Europa) as the German battle cruiser Goeben. /-Speedy, heavily armored, with innumerable watertight compartments, she was as far ahead of her time as Germany's latest 1931 warship, the pocket battleship Deutschland. At the beginning of the War she slipped through the British and French Mediterranean squadrons to Constantinople, where she was nominally attached to the Turkish Navy as the Sultan Selim.

In November 1914 she fought a single-handed engagement with three Russian predreadnoughts, had her bottom ripped open by two submerged mines. But the Sultan Selim did not sink. She limped to Constantinople where German engineers built cofferdams around her, patched her up and sent her to sea again where she promptly bumped into another mine. In 1917 she was severely bombed by British aviators. Battered but indestructible, the Goeben-Sultan Selim remained afloat. In 1918 with the Breslau, the patch-bottomed Sultan Selim sank the British monitors Raglan and M 28. She was mined again and beached by her commander. Allied bombing planes and submarines attacked her repeatedly, but she remained unsinkable.

Ensued nearly ten years of neglect. Rust nearly did what the British Navy could not, but in 1926 the French shipbuilding firm of Penhoet at St. Nazaire, builders of the liners Ile de France, Paris and France, offered to rebuild her. The Turkish Government accepted on condition that the entire job be done in Turkey.

There was no suitable Navy yard in Turkey. Penhoet built one at Ismid, with a model village for 1500 workmen and 250 French engineers and foremen. The Yawuz Sultan Selim was hauled into a floating dry dock, which promptly sank under the cruiser's weight, had to be rebuilt. But the work was finally completed. Last week's fleet maneuvers proved that the Yawuz Sultan Selim is still one of the most useful of battle cruisers.

/-By building the Goeben and many another grim battle boat Germany dashed into the naval race with Britain which led straight to World War. Shrill above the German shipyards' anvil warbeat rose Kaiser Wilhelm's royal ravings:

"Germany . . . by a larger fleet . . . will bring the British to their senses through sheer fright! . . . England! Uncle! A most charming fellow, this King Edward VII! Ineffable cheek! Pharisee! Rot! Twaddle! Bunkum! Hurrah, we've caught the English scoundrels out this time!"

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