They accordingly resolved not to give up Malta unless Lord Whitworth, the British ambassador at Paris, "received a satisfactory explanation" relative to the Sebastiani report.
This is probably the sense in which we may interpret his tirade against Lord Whitworth at the diplomatic circle on the 13th of March.
Whitworth also warned them on the 10th of April that "the chief motives for delay are that they (the French) are totally unprepared for a naval war."
Armstrong, Whitworth & Co., and the battleship " Messudiyeh " (9100 tons displacement) reconstructed by the firm of Ansaldo (Genoa) in 1902, and re-armed by Vickers, Sons & Maxim, formed the only really effective war-ships at the disposal of Turkey in 1910, although a few armoured ships in addition might still serve for coast defence at a pinch, and a few more for training ships.
Before he was sixteen he attended lectures at Owens College, and at eighteen he gained a mathematical scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1871 as senior wrangler and first Smith's prizeman, having previously taken the degree of D.Sc. at London University and won a Whitworth scholarship. Although elected a fellow and tutor of his college, he stayed up at Cambridge only for a very short time, preferring to learn practical engineering as a pupil in the works in which his father was a partner.