Countess von Corvey travels to Istanbul on the SMS Loreley. The ship actually existed. It was built in Glasgow by D. & W. Henderson & Company in 1885, and its original name was Mohican. The original buyer, A.H.G. Wittey & Co., put the steam yacht already back on the market in 1892, and it was bought by the German Kriegsmarine in 1896. The Germans used it as a Stationsschiff — indicating it was meant to stay put at one location. The steam yacht never was an actual battleship. It didn’t have an iron-plated hull; its armament was symbolic rather than practical, and its top speed didn’t exceed twelve knots.

At the end of the Crimean War (1853-1856) — a conflict that opposed Russia to an alliance made up of the Ottoman Empire, the UK, France, and Sardinia — the Paris Treaty of 1856 was signed. It was a humiliation for Russia that shattered the Tsarist Empire’s image as a military and economic powerhouse. Instead, it was revealed as a backward country with poor infrastructure. Its army and navy were out-dated — and poorly managed at that. Russia had to demilitarise the Black Sea, resulting in the destruction of their fleet and the closure of the naval docks in Sevastopol (amongst others). The treaty also stipulated that the Ottoman Empire had to allow the stationing of a European military ship in the Bosporus. In 1896, that task fell to the SMS Loreley. The yacht was slightly rebuilt and armed. It replaced a paddle steamer whose name it took over.

The SMS Loreley saw active service until 1914. The ship was mainly used by German ambassadors and other high-ranking diplomats to the Ottoman Empire, and by the Kaiser and his family. In 1911-1912, during the Italo-Turkish War, the SMS Loreley was used to protect German civilians living in Turkish coastal areas. When the Greek were poised to take Thessaloniki, the Germans ferried the former Sultan Abdul Hamid back to Constantinople on board of the SMS Lorelei. These missions inspired me to cast the ship in Dream Whisperer as a rescue ship for German families stranded in Greece during the Great War at a moment when the new Greek government was about to decide to become actively involved in the war on the Allied Nations’ side.

After its decommission in 1914, the SMS Loreley remained in use as a supply ship for delivering fuel, ammunition, and food to German battleships in the Mediterranean Sea and the Sea of Marmara. In 1917 the SMS Loreley was taken back into service until the end of the war. Afterwards, the ship’s ownership was transferred to Turkey. It was renamed Haci Paşa and used as a freighter until it ingloriously sank in the Black Sea in 1926.