Greek Battleship Salamis - Construction and Cancellation

Construction and Cancellation

In the run-up to the Balkan wars of 1912–1913, the Ottoman Empire—Greece's traditional naval rival—set about modernizing its fleet. The first component was the order of the dreadnought Reshadieh in 1911. The expansion of Ottoman naval power threatened Greek control of the Aegean; to counter the Ottoman dreadnought, Greece decided to order a ship as well: the Salamis. The new battleship was ordered from the German shipbuilder AG Vulcan, based in Hamburg, in 1912. This made Greece the fourteenth and final country to order a dreadnought battleship. The initial design called for a ship 458 ft (140 m) long with a beam of 72 ft (22 m), a draft of 24 ft (7.3 m), and a displacement of 13,500 t (13,300 long tons; 14,900 short tons). The ship was designed with 2-shaft turbines rated at 26,000 shp for a top speed of 21 kn (39 km/h; 24 mph). The armament was to be six 14 inch guns in twin turrets, eight 6 inch, eight 3 in (7.6 cm), and four 37 mm (1.5 in) guns, and two 45 cm (18 in) torpedo tubes. The design was revised several times; by 23 January 1912, it was finalized with the details specified above. The ship was to be delivered to the Greek Navy by March 1915, at a cost of £1,693,000.

The keel was laid down on 23 July 1913; the hull was complete and ready for launching by 11 November 1914, the day the ship entered the water. The main battery and secondary guns were sub-contracted to Bethlehem Steel in the United States. However, the outbreak of World War I in August 1914 had drastically altered the situation; the naval blockade of Germany emplaced by Great Britain meant that the guns could not be delivered. Work was halted on 31 December 1914. By this time Greece had only paid AG Vulcan £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 incomplete vessel was towed to Kiel, where she was used as a barracks ship.

After the end of the war, the Greek navy refused to accept the incomplete hull. AG Vulcan sued the Greek government in 1923. A lengthy arbitration ensued; on 23 April 1932 the arbitrators determined that the Greek government owed AG Vulcan £30,000, and that AG Vulcan would be awarded the hull. The ship was broken up for scrap in Bremen that year. A second Greek dreadnought, the Vasilefs Konstantinos, a slightly modified version of the French Bretagne-class battleship, met a similar fate. Like Salamis, work on Vasilefs Konstantinos was halted by the outbreak of the war in August 1914, and in the aftermath the Greek government refused to pay for the unfinished ship as well.