Both Madrid and Istanbul boast navy museums—the Museo Naval and Deniz Muzesi, respectively—but the collections on display are so different it's difficult to recall that once the fleets of these former great powers shared a common history. In 1571 Spain and Ottoman Turkey met in one of history's largest and bloodiest battles at sea, Lepanto. In a few hours on a Sunday afternoon in early October more than 30,000 men were slain or drowned in shallow waters at the mouth of the Gulf of Patras, and nearly 200 oared galleys were sunk.
Spain led the Holy League's polyglot formations to sudden victory over the fleet of Sultan Selim II in that immense battle, which (thanks to events elsewhere) seemingly changed very little in the balance of the centuries-long clash between the Muslim East and the Christian West. Other than a handsome, full-size reproduction painting of Don Juan of Austria—the Holy League's young commander—and his broadsword, there's little to commemorate this huge collision at sea in the Spanish naval museum, and nothing at all in its counterpart in Istanbul.
Madrid is home to the world-famous Prado and some 40 other marvelous museums, but this one, in 21 rooms on the second floor of the Spanish Navy's headquarters building at 5 Paseo del Prado, deserves more attention than it gets. If Lepanto is treated lightly, much else from a collection of authentic artifacts, early charts, and period art that spans more than five centuries is displayed wonderfully well. For a visitor from the United States, the exhibit on the Spanish-American War (in Room XIII, complete with the late Vice Admiral Hyman Rickover's 1976 analysis of what really sank the USS Maine in Havana Harbor, reprinted in 1994 by the Naval Institute Press) is especially interesting. The museum encompasses a library and research center.
For its part, the highlight of the Turkish naval museum (in a former hangar and warehouse complex near the Besikta ferry terminal on the Bosporus, between the splendid Dolmabahce Palace Museum and the former Ciragan Palace, now a five-star hotel) is its collection of old imperial caiques, the sleek royal barges that moved 19th-century Ottoman sultans, their wives, and courtiers around the waterfront of their capital. The museum boasts 13 of these ornate vessels in a stand-alone building on the grounds. Several others are being restored on the exhibition floor.
Caiques and their crews didn't impress author and former Mississippi River pilot Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), who visited "Stamboul" in late 1867 during the reign of Sultan Abdul Aziz. In Innocents Abroad he wrote that a caique was "admirably miscalculated for the service it is built for. It is handsomely and neatly fitted up, but no man could handle it well in the turbulent currents that sweep down the Bosporus from the Black Sea, and few men could row it satisfactorily even in still water."
But Clemens was wrong, as centuries of Ottoman experience prove, and any museum visitor will enjoy studying these unique craft, graceful as the collegiate rowing shells they loosely resemble. The museum is also home to Turkish Navy exhibits in an adjacent main exhibition building and to an archive and art gallery across the street.
Madrid's museum is open 1000 to 1400 but closed Mondays and in August. It's near the Banco de Espana stop of the city metro's No. 2 line and served by many bus lines. Admission is free. Its Web address is www.museonavalmadrid.com. Istanbul's naval museum is open between 0900 and 1700, but closed on Mondays and Tuesdays and between 1230 and 1330 other days. Their Web presence can be found at www.tsk.mil.tr/dzkk. Access is by ferryboat from Eminono (on the Golden Horn, near the old city) or Uskudar, or by metered taxi. Both museums house small gift shops; neither has a snack bar.
