Topic summary
Battle of Preveza
Ottoman Empire
366 cannons
3,000 janissaries and 8,000 soldiers
50–140 carracks and galleons
Possibly 250–300 other ships
2,500–2,594 cannon
60,000 soldiers
400 killed
800 wounded
128 ships sunk or captured (Turkish sources)
13 ships sunk and 36 captured (English sources)
3,000 prisoners (English sources)
The Battle of Preveza (also known as Prevesa) was a naval engagement that occurred on 28 September 1538 near Preveza in the Ionian Sea in northwest Greece, in the same area as the Battle of Actium in 31 BC. The battle was between an Ottoman fleet, led by Kapudan PashaHayreddin Barbarossa, and a Holy League of Venetian and Hispano-Imperial composition, led by Genoese admiral Andrea Doria. It was part of both the Ottoman–Habsburg wars and the Ottoman Venetian War of 1537-1547. It ended with the Holy League defeated by the Ottomans despite its enormous advantage in numbers and tonnage.
The course of the battle is uncertain; according to historian Roger Merriman, "accounts of it are so contradictory that it is almost impossible to reach the truth". Traditional historiography, aligned with Venetian sources, holds the Holy Fleet was undone by an inexplicable lack of initiative by Doria, who might have had secret incentives to throw the battle. The Genoese were long time rivals to the Venetians, while Barbarossa was in midst of negotiations with Doria for a possible change of sides. Conversely, Imperial sources blame the defeat on the Venetians, who would have refused to follow Doria's orders in a decisive moment out of the same enmity.
The battle was amongst the three largest in the Mediterranean in the sixteenth century, alongside the Battle of Djerba and the Battle of Lepanto. In contrast, it was relatively uneventful, although it still resulted in a rupture between the Christian navies. This marked the beginning of the Ottoman Empire as the first naval power in the Mediterranean, which lasted thirty years until their loss in Lepanto in 1571.