Brandenburgs in Ottoman service at Lemnos

Kurfürst Friedrich Wilhelm and Weissenburg later entered Ottoman service as Barbaros Hayreddin and Turgut Reis. Their appearance at the Battle of Lemnos places an 1890s design in combat two decades after launch. The battle is presented here as an armoured cruiser defeating two older battleships, which undercuts the assumption that the battleship label alone guaranteed superiority. Their original design merit did not remove the risks of employing an ageing type in a later tactical and technological environment.