In 1885, Greece ordered three new ironclads of the . "Psara" was ordered from the "Société Nouvelle des Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée" shipyard in Le Havre, France during the premiership of Charilaos Trikoupis. The ship, named for the island of Psara, was launched in 1890, and by 1892, she and her sister-ships "Spetsai" and "Hydra" were delivered to the Greek fleet. "Psara" saw limited action in the Greco–Turkish War in 1897, as the Royal Hellenic Navy was unable to make use of its superiority over the Ottoman Navy. The Ottoman Navy had remained in port during the conflict, but a major naval intervention of the Great Powers prevented the Greeks from capitalizing on their superiority. The conflict was precipitated by an 1897-1898 Christian uprising against Ottoman rule on the island of Crete, which was the object of an intervention between February 1897 and December 1898 by the International Squadron, a multinational force made up of ships of the Austro-Hungarian Navy, French Navy, Imperial German Navy, Italian Royal Navy ("Regia Marina"), Imperial Russian Navy, and British Royal Navy. The international intervention in Crete concluded with the creation of an autonomous Cretan State under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire in December 1898. Between 1897 and 1900, "Psara" and her sister-ships were partially rearmed; "Psara" was modified at the La Seyne shipyard. Their small-caliber guns were replaced with one gun forward, eight guns, four 3-pounders, and ten 1-pounder revolver cannon. One of the 14-inch torpedo tubes was replaced with a weapon. In 1908–1910, the old 5.9 in guns were replaced with new, longer L/45 models. The Balkan League, of which Greece was a member, declared war on the Ottoman Empire in October 1912. Two months later, the Ottoman fleet attacked the Greek navy, in an attempt to disrupt the naval blockade surrounding the Dardanelles. The Ottoman fleet, which included "Turgut Reis", "Barbaros Hayreddin", the outdated ironclad battleships "Mesudiye" and "Âsâr-ı Tevfik", nine destroyers, and six torpedo boats, sortied from the Dardanelles at 9:30. The smaller ships remained at the mouth of the straits while the battleships sailed north, remaining near to the coast.