http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.....%281913%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Erin

3rd and 4th most important ships in Ottoman Navy history (these did fly the Ottoman flag and fight in combat under said flag):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.....nsequences

What has the Ottoman navy to do with Korea, you ask? Why, everything! If you put the historical actions surrounding these ships together with the Anglo-Japanese alliance of 1903, anyone can readily see that it is the fault of perfidious Albion (and not the good ol’ USA) that things in Korea are the way they are.

Not to mention the thousands of Koreans currently in mortal peril in northern Iraq! It’s the Brits’ fault; I regret it has to take some good blarney from an American of Irish descent to point out the obvious.

I just can’t understand why tens of thousands of Koreans haven’t marched on that well-photographed and documented British embassy, to take it apart brick by brick like the Bastille — all the way down to that infuriating cornerstone, the one that insolently fails to mention the name of the Korean emperor of the era.

I suppose it’s due to Koreans’ inherent good manners, not to mention their respect for historical landmarks. The Brits are the fortunate (but thoroughly undeserving) beneficiaries of Korean manners and good taste.

It would be interesting to know if “a piece of the action” from the slave trade of the Barbary pirates made its way back to the Sultan in Constantinople; if it did, that would support my proposition.

It would comprise another interesting pre-modern example of “plausible deniability” — like Elizabeth I and her “privateersmen” at times of nominal peace between England and Spain. One imagines the Sultan counting the gold from his “take” in one part of the palace, while elsewhere on the same day he assures indignant western ambassadors that he shares their indignation over the latest outrages perpetrated by his nominal but out-of-control subjects in the eastern Med.