Battle of Cape Celidonia

Battle of Cape Celidonia
Part of Ottoman-Habsburg wars
Spanish galleons fighting off Ottoman galleys. Oil on canvas by Juan de la Corte (1597–1660), Naval Museum of Madrid.
Date 14–16 July 1616 Location Off Cape Celidonia, Anatolian south coast Result Spanish victory
Belligerents
Habsburg Spain	Ottoman Empire
Commanders and leaders
Francisco de Rivera	Bey of Rhodes
Strength
5 galleons 1 patache 1,600 soldiers[1]	55 galleys 12,000 soldiers[1]
Casualties and losses
34 killed 93 wounded[2]	10 galleys sunk[3] 23 galleys damaged 3,200 killed[4]

The Battle of Cape Celidonia took place on 14 July 1616 during the Ottoman-Habsburg struggle for the control of the Mediterranean when a small Spanish fleet under the command of Francisco de Rivera y Medina cruising off Cyprus was attacked by an Ottoman fleet that vastly outnumbered it. Despite this, the Spanish ships, mostly galleons, managed to repel the Ottomans, whose fleet consisted mainly of galleys, inflicting heavy losses.

The battle, considered in military historigraphy a «Little Lepanto»,^[5] became a turning point in Mediterranean naval warfare, where the galleys employed by the Ottoman navy were left obsolete by the heavily armed western roundships, like galleons and naos, increasingly used by Spain and the rest of Christian nations.^[6][7] The victory was further made significant by its closeness to the Ottoman core and the little size of the forces required to defeat the Turk navy. From that point, the technical and strategical distance between the Christian and Muslim navies would only expand over the centuries.^[8]