The Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and Navigation between the U.S. and the Ottoman Empire signed on May 7, 1830 and ratified by both parties on October 9, 1832 opened the door for the expansion of American trade in the Levant and Black Sea. This put the U.S. on an equal basis with the major European powers for trade in the Ottoman Empire.

When Commodore David Porter arrived in Constantinople on USS John Adams in 1830 to assume the role of U.S. Charge d’Affaires, the Turks were much impressed with his ship. Sultan Mahmud 2^nd (1808-1839) was very keen to modernize his navy after its destruction at the Battle of Navarino in 1827 and struck up a good relationship with Porter.

One day Mahmud invited Porter to accompany him through the naval dockyard. The Sultan was aware of Porter’s naval experience and wished to find out the latter’s opinion of the Ottoman navy. Porter rendered his opinion via an interpreter of the defects in the Turkish naval system without offending Mahmud and pointed out that the Turkish ships were inferior to those of the European powers. The Turks had fallen behind the British and Americans, who used the latest technology in their shipbuilding construction. The Sultan dispatched his naval pasha to discuss naval matters with Porter.

This interview created such a favorable impression upon the Sultan, that Ottoman officials wanted to invite Porter to their residences. Initially, the European Ministers in Constantinople may have viewed Porter as an upstart, but eventually the latter also established good relations with them. Porter’s relationship with the Sultan proved useful in U.S.-Ottoman relations, culminating in the signing of the treaty mentioned above. There was a secret article in the 1830 Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and Navigation that said that the U.S. was going to build and sell ships to the Ottoman Empire, but the Senate rejected that part so as not to undermine the Monroe Doctrine.

The U.S. shipbuilder Henry Eckford was appointed to oversee the Ottoman naval program. He arrived in the ship the United States, which was constructed in New York. The ship took two months to arrive in Turkey. Eckford had originally thought of selling the ship when he arrived in Constantinople – and the Sultan thought the United States was a gift from the U.S. Government. Eventually the Turks purchased the ship for US $150,000 and renamed it the Mesir-i-Ferah. Mahmud turned away from the British, French, and Russians because of his empire’s new relations with the U.S.

Eckford was well paid for his skills, and he started working on a small frigate and 74-gun sloop. The latter ship was “to be built on a frame of southern oak imported in pieces to Turkey from New York” and that “shipping these prefabricated timbers some 6,000 miles was a reasonable thing to do… it suggests that skilled tradesmen and good lumber were in very short supply.”

Eckford’s ships were constructed on shipways in an isolated American area separated “from the rest of the Turkish yard.” In December 1832, Porter wrote to the U.S. Secretary of State, Edward Livingston, that the American part of the shipping was under “American control and regulation with no Turkish authority [being exercised], and that it occupies a space as large as the Navy Yard at Washington, with workshops, mould lofts, forges, nearly all put up since we have been here.”

The American missionary, Rev, William Goodell, noted in his diary that Eckford was a very generous individual who “donated considerable amounts of money to both the [the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions] and to schools on several occasions, and that they visited each other frequently. Goodell’s diary and letters prove the existence of a social bond between the missionaries and the naval expert, and demonstrates the moral support and financial philanthropy of Eckford until his death.”

In 1832, cholera hit Constantinople which may have originated in India. Eckford found the climate in Constantinople not to his liking and may have died from cholera. His body was taken by ship to the U.S., where he was buried in St. George’s Church cemetery, Hempstead, Long Island in New York state. Even before his death, he had asked the Sultan to relieve him, but the later would only do so if Eckford was prepared to have his foreman, Foster Rhodes assume the duty as chief naval constructor.

Foster Rhodes made great improvements to the Turkish ships in the position he held until 1839. He oversaw the construction of the frigate, Nusretiye, in 1836 and the Mesir-i-Bahri and Tahir-i-Bahri in 1837. According to David Dixon Porter (the son of Commodore David Porter) who wrote a ‘Memoir of Commodore David Porter’, Rhodes was “ultimately removed, owing to the intrigues of a Turkish pasha, with which he had quarreled, and he left the Turkish Navy just when it was about starting to have a real modern existence.”

Another incident that involved Rhodes was during an interview he had with the Chief of the Navy Board, Mustapha Bey. The Turkish official used abusive language which Rhodes found unacceptable; as a result, “the latter raised his pipe and broke it on the insolent Ottoman’s head.” The case was laid before the Sultan – though I could not find any evidence regarding the Sultan’s decision. It can be assumed that the Sultan took no action against Rhodes, for whom he had great respect and admiration. Rhodes departed from Constantinople of his own accord and upon his return to the U.S. he was appointed Naval Constructor at the U.S. Navy Yard in Brooklyn, New York in 1840.

The final contributor to the Ottoman Navy was Rhodes’ chief carpenter, Charles Ross, who supervised the Anyalikavak yard. The literature on Ross is very sparse and the researcher would have to use a magnifying glass to carefully go through the American archival sources for more information. Ross was present and a participant in the modernization of the Ottoman navy under Mahmud during the 1830s.

In conclusion, the American-Ottoman Treaty of 1830 opened the door for the establishment of relations between Washington and Constantinople. Commodore David Porter also played an important part in cementing these relations, and his ship, USS John Adams, impressed the Sultan so much that this opened the door for Eckford, Rhodes, and Ross to be employed as chief constructors of the Ottoman navy.