Qualla: Battle of Mytilene (1690)

Battle of Mytilene (1690): Introduction

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tedmek, Public domain. Daniele Dolfin lost his left hand in the smoke off Mytilene. The Venetian commander had sailed into the Aegean with his twelve largest warships, and on 8 September 1690, in the waters off the capital of Lesbos, he ran them into a combined Ottoman and Barbary fleet of thirty-two. The fighting that followed was close and savage, fought at cannon range with the ships pounding one another's hulls and rigging. When it ended, Venice had won, and an angry sultan three hundred miles away in Constantinople would draw a lesson from the wreckage that reshaped his navy.

Image: Tedmek | Public domain

Battle of Mytilene (1690): The Raid Into the Aegean

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Greece_location_map.svg: Lencer / derivative work: Uwe Dedering (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Dolfin had just taken command at the port of Monemvasia when he led his squadron out, the largest sailing ships of the Venetian fleet, twelve in all. This was the Morean War, one in the long series of conflicts between Venice and the Ottoman Empire, and Dolfin's mission was disru...

Image: Greece_location_map.svg: Lencer / derivative work: Uwe Dedering (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Battle of Mytilene (1690): Cannon Range

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nourerrahmane, CC BY-SA 4.0. The brunt fell on a single ship. The Redentor took something like a hundred cannon shots through hull and sails and suffered most of the Venetian casualties. Among them was Admiral Giovanni Buggie, struck in the leg by a cannonball; the wound turned to gangrene and he died four d...

Image: Nourerrahmane | CC BY-SA 4.0

Battle of Mytilene (1690): An Angry Sultan

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Katsiaryna Naliuka, CC BY-SA 3.0. For two more days, 9 and 10 September, the fleets eyed each other across the water without renewing the fight. On the 11th the Muslim fleet withdrew to Foca on the Anatolian coast, and Dolfin turned his battered ships back toward the Morea. The deepest consequences of the battle ...

Image: Katsiaryna Naliuka | CC BY-SA 3.0

Battle of Mytilene (1690): A Navy Remade

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tedmek, Public domain. Out of that anger came a lasting change. Suleiman II began building sailing warships of the Ottomans' own, determined to end the navy's dependence on the Barbary pirates. He did not live to finish the work, but his successor Ahmed II carried the policy forward, and by 1694, only ...

Image: Tedmek | Public domain