20 April 1453
The four ships
On 20 April 1453 three Genoese ships sent by the pope, and an imperial transport under Phlatanelas carrying grain from Sicily, come up the Sea of Marmara under a south wind. Mehmed orders Baltaoğlu to stop them, and the Ottoman galleys and boats row out from the Double Columns. The four ships sail through them until the wind drops close to the city, and about 150 Ottoman boats close round them. Runciman puts the calm off the Acropolis point, Turkish histories off Yeşilköy (then San Stefano).
The sea walls of Constantinople on the Sea of MarmaraWikimedia Commons, Ollios, CC BY-SA 3.0 (Propontis wall 1.JPG)
The Ottoman crews try to board and burn the ships. The ships stand higher than the galleys, and their crews throw stones, arrows and fire down on the boats. Mehmed watches from the shore, rides his horse into the sea and shouts orders at Baltaoğlu.
Mehmed II, painted by Nakkaş Osman for Seyyid Lokman’s book of the sultans’ portraits, 1579Wikimedia Commons, Nakkaş Osman, Public domain (Portrait of Mehmet II (cropped). Human Physiognomy Concerning the Personal Dispositions of the Ottomans, 1579 (TSMK H.1563).jpg)
In the evening the wind rises again, and the four ships break out of the ring. After dark the chain is opened, and they enter the Horn with an escort of Venetian galleys. The next day Mehmed has Baltaoğlu, who is wounded in the eye, beaten, takes his property and gives the command of the fleet to Hamza Bey.
Sources
- Nicolò Barbaro, Giornale dell’assedio di Costantinopoli (1453).
- Doukas, Historia Turco-Byzantina (about 1462).
- Michael Kritovoulos, History of Mehmed the Conqueror (about 1467).
- Steven Runciman, The Fall of Constantinople 1453 (1965).
- Franz Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror and His Time (1978).
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