Fleets Clash at Navarino

Today’s installment concludes The Battle of Navarino,
our selection from History of England During the Thirty Years Peace by Harriet Martineau published in 1849.

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Previously in The Battle of Navarino.

Time: October 20, 1827
Place: Navarino Bay (modern Phylos), Agean Sea

As the spirit of the Treaty of London was thus broken through, the three admirals concluded to compel an adherence to the terms agreed upon at the conference, by entering the harbor and placing themselves, ship by ship, in guard over the imprisoned fleets. The strictest orders were given that not a musket should be fired unless firing should begin on the other side. They were permit ted to pass the batteries and take up their position; but a boat was fired upon by the Turks, probably under the impression that she was sent to board one of their vessels. A lieutenant and several of the crew were killed. There was a discharge of musketry in return by an English and a French vessel; and then a cannon- shot was received by the French Admiral’s ship, which was answered by a broadside.

The action, probably intended by none of the parties, was now fairly begun; and when it ended, there was nothing left of the Turkish and Egyptian fleets but fragments of wrecks strewing the waters. As the crews left their disabled vessels they set them on fire; and among the dangers of the day to the allied squadrons, not the least was from these floating furnaces drifting about among a crowd of ships. The battle, which took place on October 20th, lasted four hours. The Turkish and Egyptian forces suffered cruelly. Of the allies the English suffered the most, but with them the loss was only seventy-five killed, and the wounded were fewer than two hundred. The three British line-of-battle ships had to be sent home after being patched up at Malta for the voyage.

The anxiety of mind of the three admirals is said to have been great —- both on account of the calamity itself, and the doubt about how their conduct of the affair would be viewed at home. One reasonable apprehension was that there would be a slaughter of the Christians at Constantinople. But things were now con ducted there in a more cautious and deliberate manner than of old. An embargo was laid on all the vessels in the harbor; but the mob of the faithful were kept in check. There were curious negotiations between the Government and the ambassadors, while each party was in possession of the news and wanted to learn how much the other knew. The Sultan himself wished to declare war at once, but his counsellors desired to gain time; and there were doubts, fluctuations, and bootless negotiations, in which neither party would concede anything for several weeks. The Turks would yield nothing about Greece, and the allies would yield neither compensation nor apology for the affair of Navarino.

On December 8th, however, it being clear that nothing could be gained by negotiation, the ambassadors left Constantinople. The Christian merchants might have embarked with them, but they must have left their property behind; and some preferred remaining. The Turkish authorities went to great lengths in encouraging them to do so; but whether this was from pacific inclinations, or from a sense of their value as hostages, could not be certainly known; and the greater number did not relish trusting themselves to conjecture in such a case. The day before the ambassadors left, an offer was made of a general amnesty to the Greeks. But this was not what was required. As they sailed out of the harbor, the Sultan must have felt that he was left deprived of his fleet, at war with Russia, England, and France. But the coolness and ability shown by his Government in circumstances so extremely embarrassing as those of this autumn, were evidence that there were minds about him very well able to see that if Russia desired to crush him, England and France would take care that she did not succeed.

As for the Greeks, their Government was thankful to accept the mediation of the allies, but so weak as to be unable to enforce any of their requisitions. Piracy under the Greek flag reached such a pass in the Levant that Great Britain had to take the matter into her own hands. In the month of November, it was decreed, by an order in council, that the British ships in the Mediterranean should seize every vessel they saw under the Greek flag or armed and fitted out at a Greek port, except such as were under the immediate orders of the Greek Government.

Thus, the British carried matters with a high hand in regard to both parties concerned in the unhappy Greek war. It is a case on which so much is to be said on every side that it is impossible to help sympathizing with all parties in the transactions preceding and following the Battle of Navarino —- with the Greeks, for reasons which the heart apprehends more rapidly than tongue or pen can state them; with the Porte, under the provocation of the interference of strangers between her and her rebellious sub jects; with the Egyptians, in their duty of vassalage —- however wrongly it might be performed; and with the allied powers in their sense of the intolerableness of a warfare so cruel and so hope less going on amid the haunts of commerce, and to the disturbance of a world otherwise at peace; and with two of those three allies in their apprehension of Turkey being destroyed, and Greece probably once more enslaved by the power and arts of the third.

This ends our series of passages on The Battle of Navarino by Harriet Martineau from his book History of England During the Thirty Years Peace published in 1849. This blog features short and lengthy pieces on all aspects of our shared past. Here are selections from the great historians who may be forgotten (and whose work have fallen into public domain) as well as links to the most up-to-date developments in the field of history and of course, original material from yours truly, Jack Le Moine. – A little bit of everything historical is here.

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