The author of Incident of travel in Greece, Turkey, Russia and Poland, published in 1838 at London described (p. 223-224) his visit to the Turkish naval shipyard.
“The next day I took a caique at Tophana, and went up to the shipyards at the head of the Golden Horn to visit Mr. Rhodes, to whom I had a letter from a friend in Smyrna. Mr. Rhodes is native of Long Island, but from his boyhood a resident of this city, and I take great pleasure in saying that he is an honour to our state and country. The reader will remember that, some years ago, Mr. Eckford, one of our most prominent citizens, under a pressure of public and domestic calamities, left his native city. He sailed from New York in a beautiful corvette (1), its destination unknown and came to anchor under the walls of the seraglio in the harbour of Constantinople. The sultan saw her, admired her, and bought her; and I saw her “riding like a thing of life” on the waters of the Golden Horn, a model of beauty. The fame of his skill, and the beautiful specimen he carried out with him, recommended Mr. Eckford to the sultan as a fit instrument to build up the character of the Ottoman navy; and afterward, when his full value became known, the sultan remarked of him that America must be a great nation if she could spare from her service such a man, Had he lived, even in the decline of life he would have made for himself a reputation in that distant quarter of the globe equal to that he had left behind him, and doubtless would have reaped the attendant penuciary reward. Mr. Rhodes went out as Mr. Eckfords’s foreman, and on his death the task of completing his employer’s work devolved on him. It could not have fallen upon a better man. He was then preparing for the launch of the great ship; the longest, as he said, and he knew the dimensions of every ship that floated, in the world (2). I accompanied him over the ship and through the yards, and it was with no small degree of interest that I viewed a townsman, an entire stranger in the country, by his skill alone standing at the head of the great naval establishment of the sultan. As an instance of his discretion, particularly proper in the service of that suspicious and despotic government, I may mention that, while standing near the ship and remarking a piece of cloth stretched across her stern, I asked him her name and he told me he did not know; what is was painted on her stern, and his dragoman knew, but he had never looked under, that he might not be able to answer when asked”.
Notes
1. The Mr. Eckford to which the author referred was Henry Eckford, born 12 March 1775 at Kilwinning, Scotland and which died 12 November 1832 at Constantinople. The 26-gun corvette was by him built as named United States and sold to the Ottoman empire and taken in to the Ottoman navy as Mesir-i-Ferah (www.wapedia.mobi.en/Henry_Eckford.
2. The Ottoman ship-of-the-line Mahmoud, known for several years of the largest warship in the world was apparently designed by Eckford, who died in 1832. So the visit must have taken place after 1832 when Eckford already died. The 128-gun Mahmoud or Mahmudiye was however built in 1829, while in 1833 the 96-gun Memduhiye was built. So there is some confusion, while in the same year as the Memduhiye the 62-gun frigate Tair-i-Bahri was built.
