Psara () was a steel-built ironclad warship named for one of the Aegean Sea islands that played a key role in the war at sea during the Greek War of Independence. The final vessel of the , she was ordered in 1885 in response to a crisis in the Balkans and Ottoman naval expansion. The ship was launched in 1889 and delivered to Greece by 1902. She was armed with a main battery of three guns and five guns, and had a top speed of .
Psara and her sisters saw extensive service with the Greek Navy. They participated in the Greco–Turkish War in 1897 until the Great Powers intervened and prevented the Greek Navy from capitalizing on their superiority over the Ottoman Navy. Psara saw action in the First Balkan War at the Naval Battle of Elli and was present at the Naval Battle of Lemnos, but was too slow to actively engage the Ottoman forces. She did not see action during World War I, and was reduced to a training ship for stokers after the end of the war. She was ultimately broken up for scrap in 1932.
Design
Psara was long between perpendiculars and had a beam of and a mean draft of . She displaced as built. She was powered by a pair of marine steam engines of unknown type with steam provided by four coal-fired fire-tube boilers; they were rated at and provided a top speed of . Coal storage amounted to .
Psaras main battery consisted of three guns in individual mounts. Two guns were mounted forward in barbettes on either side of the forward superstructure; these were L/34 guns. The third gun, a L/28 gun, was placed in a turret aft. The secondary battery consisted of four L/36 guns in casemates were mounted below the forward main battery, and a fifth 5.9-inch gun was placed on the centerline on the same deck as the main battery. A number of smaller guns were carried for defense against torpedo boats. These included four L/22 guns, four 3-pounder guns, four 1-pounder guns, and six 1-pounder Hotchkiss revolver cannons. The ship was also armed with three torpedo tubes, one on each broadside and one in the bow.
The ship was armored with a mix of Creusot and compound steel. The main belt was thick in the central section and was reduced to at either end of the vessel. The main battery barbettes were protected by up to 14 inches of armor. Psara was fitted with an armor deck that was thick.
Service history
In 1885, Greece ordered three new ironclads of the . Psara was ordered from the Société Nouvelle des Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée shipyard in Le Havre, France, during the premiership of Charilaos Trikoupis. The ship, named for the island of Psara, was launched in 1890, and by 1892, she and her sister-ships Spetsai and Hydra were delivered to the Greek fleet.
Psara saw limited action in the Greco–Turkish War in 1897, as the Royal Hellenic Navy was unable to make use of its superiority over the Ottoman Navy. The Ottoman Navy had remained in port during the conflict, but a major naval intervention of the Great Powers prevented the Greeks from capitalizing on their superiority. The conflict was precipitated by an 1897-1898 Christian uprising against Ottoman rule on the island of Crete, which was the object of an intervention between February 1897 and December 1898 by the International Squadron, a multinational force made up of ships of the Austro-Hungarian Navy, French Navy, Imperial German Navy, Italian Royal Navy (Regia Marina), Imperial Russian Navy, and British Royal Navy. The international intervention in Crete concluded with the creation of an autonomous Cretan State under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire in December 1898.
Between 1897 and 1900, Psara and her sister-ships were partially rearmed; Psara was modified at the La Seyne shipyard. Their small-caliber guns were replaced with one gun forward, eight guns, four 3-pounders, and ten 1-pounder revolver cannon. One of the 14-inch torpedo tubes was replaced with a weapon. In 1908–1910, the old 5.9 in guns were replaced with new, longer L/45 models.
