Naval Battles II: 'Master and Commander' at Navarino for Greek independence

*This summer series explores the most interesting naval battles in history. This chapter is dedicated to the Battle of Navarino (present-day Pylos), which took place in 1827 during the Greek War of Independence .

At midday, the breeze that had been blowing gently since dawn briefly increased and then subsided just as the English fleet, led by HMS Asia , followed by Genoa, Albion, and Dartmouth, headed for Navarino Bay. Behind them, almost in formation, came the allied French squadron with the Sirene, Scipion, Trident, and Breslau . To the right of the French, to leeward and a little further back, the Russian ships also appeared: Azov, Gangout, Ezequiel, and Alexander Nevsky . Ten ships of the line and two frigates—Dartmouth and the heavy Sirene—to which several corvettes and brigs must be added, for a total of 26 vessels with some 458 cannons. Opposite them was a huge Turkish-Egyptian fleet in a horseshoe formation, composed of no fewer than 65 ships, including six ships of the line and 15 frigates, as well as other vessels totaling more than 2,000 cannons.

It was October 20, 1827, when a series of misunderstandings, vague orders, and suspicions between the two fleets would lead to a gigantic naval battle involving nearly 100 warships; the last in the history of the age of tall ships, which would also mark the end of the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire without the participation of a single Greek other than the slaves who, paradoxically, were forced to fight on Turkish ships.

“We were now less than two miles from the entrance to Navarino Bay, with all sails set, even the topgallant sails up and down, when the boatswain blew the whistle for dinner, and many gathered around the mess table for the last time.” An unknown British gunner aboard HMS Genoa recalled the moments before the battle just two years later.

It would mean the end of the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire without a single Greek participating.

As if taken from a novel in Patrick O'Brien 's popular naval series that began with Master and Commander , The anonymous chronicle signed 'A British Seaman' and published in Glasgow under the title Life on Board a Man-of-War; Including a Full Account of the Battle of Navarino (1827) remains a firsthand source from an ordinary sailor:

“The piper then played ‘Nancy Dawson ,’ the well-known call for the cooks of each crew to come up for their rations with their monkey—a wooden container for holding grog, a mixture of rum, sugar, water, and lemon common to the Royal Navy. When the liquor was brought in, the senior seamen of our crew proposed drinking it all down, which everyone agreed to. Jack Burgess said that it had always been the custom on HMS Tremendous during the shooting season; ‘But what,’ he continued, ‘what’s the use of me telling you about the shooting season when you’ve never seen a shot fired in your life? If you’d been with me on the Tonnant at Trafalgar, you’d have seen three rounds a minute fired, my lads! There we go! We pitch it into the San Jose just as if we were playing billiards or skittles (only a bit faster, you know, and not so nice); but you’ll see that stuff before dark.”

More than with their eyes, the cannon shots would thunder in their ears and be felt in their flesh, once the dense fog caused by the hundreds of smoking cannons quickly darkened the entire Bay of Navarino – present-day Pylos – until it was almost night, even with the sun shining in a clear sky. At 1:30 p.m., shortly after the Allied fleet began to enter the bay, one of the coastal forts fired a salvo without a shell while most of the Turks, according to Captain Milius of the Scipion , sat on the battlements smoking their pipes. The first sign of real activity was not exactly aggressive, but rather dissuasive: the dispatch of a small boat from the flagship of the Turkish admiral Moharrem Bey, in order to ask the Englishman Edward Codrington , commanding the allied force, “not to insist on bringing his fleet into the harbor.” Codrington's response was that he had come to give orders, not to receive them.

The English, French, and Russian ships were in Navarino Bay after a turbulent year surrounding the Greek Revolution, which began in 1821 and sought independence from the Ottoman Empire. Initially, the three powers had opposed the Greek nationalist demands , seeking to preserve international order and the status quo, with the Sublime Porte fearing an uncontrolled disintegration of other territories. However, the tide had shifted over the six years of conflict.

That morning, the English were not theoretically on a war mission, but rather with the intention of enforcing an armistice between the Ottomans and the Greeks. Egyptian Governor Mehmet Ali and his son, General Ibrahim Pasha, who commanded the most modern ships of the Turkish-Egyptian alliance, had played a decisive role in suppressing the Greek war. The Allies, and Codrington in particular, were suspicious of Egyptian Governor Mehmet Ali, who, according to their indications, intended to sabotage any mediation in the conflict.

In this context, the threatening presence of the enormous Turco-Egyptian fleet was intolerable for Edward Codrington , who demanded its withdrawal, supported especially by the Russian admiral, Count Heiden , and, a little more reluctantly, by the Frenchman Henry de Rigny . Two hundred years later, the true intentions of Codrington, Heiden, and de Rigny when they arrived at Navarino remain unclear, in relation to the orders they had from their governments, which were not to attack. Nor were the intentions of the Sublime Porte and its strange ally, Egypt, in theory a province of the Ottoman Empire with a governor subordinate to the Sultan but acting, in practice, however, as a sovereign state.

The English were not theoretically on a war mission, but with the intention of enforcing an armistice between the Ottomans and the Greeks.

On July 6, Great Britain, France, and Russia signed the Treaty of London, essentially based on the Anglo-Russian Protocol of 1826, which encouraged the search for an agreement between Greeks and Ottomans, albeit without any pressure. According to Woodhouse, a year later, the main clause added was secret, “though it remained secret only until The Times published the full text a week later. It stipulated that if the Porte (the Ottoman government) did not agree to mediation within a month, the three allies would send consuls to Greece, a step eventually leading to formal recognition ; and that if both the Greeks and the Turks rejected the proposed armistice, the contracting powers would intervene between themselves to prevent hostilities.”

Amidst the agreements and disputes between the four empires, in addition to Egypt, was the Greek revolutionary movement, which could be defined as the quintessence of 19th-century romantic nationalism , punctuated by the verses of a poet and adventurer: Lord Byron, who fought for Greece and in turn promoted philhellenism throughout Europe, to the point that, according to historiographical consensus, there was only one moment more decisive for Greek independence than the Battle of Navarino, which was the death of Byron himself at the siege of Messolonghi four years earlier. –C.M. Woodhouse, The Battle of Navarino –. The same British historian would succinctly summarize the battle “as an affair essentially between the great powers of the time, of which smaller nations and peoples were only incidentally beneficiaries or indirect victims.”

There was only one moment more decisive for Greek independence than the Battle of Navarino and that was the death of Lord Byron himself.

After When the boat sent by Moharrem Bey was angrily dispatched by Codrington aboard the Asia, events precipitated an event. According to the English account, the Turks hoisted a red flag ashore and fired a warning salvo to attack, for at that moment a boat sortied from the Turkish flagship, the Capitana Bey, towards that of the Egyptian Ibrahim Baja, while movement was perceived from the Ottoman fire-ships stationed near the island of Scaphyria, which closes the bay: basically the English alibi that it was the enemy who initiated the attack, which ignores Codrington's provocations. Almost immediately, at 2:10, Captain Fellows, aboard the frigate Dartmouth, who had remained near the entrance to watch for the Turkish fire-ships, observed their crews preparing a fuse.

At Navarino, the Turkish-Egyptian fleet still had several fire ships: unmanned fireboats that would launch themselves at enemy ships in enclosed bays or harbors to set them ablaze. Although they were beginning to fall into disuse by the 18th century with larger sailing vessels, they were extremely dangerous in a naval setting like Navarino Bay. To avoid this risk, Fellows of Codrington's orders were to fire their cannonballs at these ships at the first sign of activity, while they were still far from the Allied fleet, with the aim of sinking them or causing them to burn before being launched. Fellows, however, sent a warning boat to desist from their approach. The Turks responded by firing at the fireboat and set fire to one of the fireboats.

As historian Douglas Dakin notes in The Greek Struggle for Independence (1821–1833), Fellows then sent a cutter (another small boat) to take care of the incendiary vessel before it was launched and ensure that it burned harmlessly off the coast of Scaphyria. The Muslims this time fired on the cutter , and to protect the crews of the boat and the cutter , Fellows opened fire with muskets from the Dartmouth. Admiral de Rigny did the same from his flagship , the Sirene, which was passing close by to take up its assigned position.

The Turks responded by shooting at the boat and setting fire to one of the vessels.

Had the Egyptian fleet remained calm in the face of British provocation and waited until nightfall, the use of the fire ships at Navarino would have been fatal to the British, French, and Russian vessels: in the darkness, they were well camouflaged, and it was practically impossible to see them properly and sink them before the small crews commanding them set them on fire close to the enemy vessels before jumping into the water. However, after the Dartmouth and Sirene fired at the fire ships from a distance, the Egyptian frigate Ishania approached the French ship and opened fire, and then a full-scale cannonade broke out between the two fleets.

“The battle at that time was raging with the most relentless fury; one ship after another was set ablaze; and when they exploded, they shook our ship to its foundations,” he recounted. the gunner of the British ship Genoa: "We came under very intense fire from the two warships sailing alongside us, which continued firing at us until they were completely disabled, with all their masts smashed and entire planks torn from their sides by the enormous discharge of metal from our cannons."

The English gunner's description describes how a naval battle of that magnitude unfolded at the time: approaching from the side, the ships would unload all their cannons against the enemy while exposing themselves to the other ship's bullets. In this way, the skill in positioning and maneuvering in front of the other ship was inevitably combined with the differential in firepower to gain the upper hand.

Sailing ships had, in fact, reached their peak at the end of the 18th century, especially with those warships, such as the three-decker ships of the line with 100 cannons appearing on their decks, or those with two, with between 70 and 90. Of all of them, the largest ship ever armed had been the Spanish three-decker ship Santísima Trinidad, with 116 cannons, captured and sunk in 1805 during the Battle of Trafalgar , while at Navarino the most powerful were two-decker ships such as the English flagship, the HMS Asia, with 85 cannons, accompanied by the Russian Azov, Gangout, Ezequiel and Alexander Nevsky and the French Scipion, Trident and Bresalu, which were of the same class, although with fewer cannons, since they carried 74.

Along with the ships of the line were the faster frigates, such as the Dartmouth, which were less powerful in terms of cannon fire, with up to 50 pieces and which, more rarely, could be two-deck, with up to sixty cannons, as was the specific case of the Sirene, the French flagship of Admiral de Rigny that fought at Navarino.

And in addition to the ships of the line and the war frigates, there were the corvette, the sloop or the brig, two-masted vessels with fewer cannons, which were intended for surveillance, pursuit, escort and patrol duties. Sailing ships with dense three-masted or two-masted rigging and intricate rigging for their handling would progressively disappear throughout the century, replaced by steam-propelled battleships and destroyers.

To the importance of the cannons, we must add the skill of the crews both in navigation and in the musket fire that also accompanied the cannons, as shown in the account of the Genoa sailor:

“We were ordered to fire only twice from the guns, but, in this particular instance, we dared to disobey orders; for after the first five or six rounds, I dare say the gun I handled was regularly loaded with two 32-pound balls and one 32-pound grapeshot ball; and sometimes with a grapeshot cartridge on top of it all. When the officer reproved us for overloading the guns, one of the men replied, as he wiped the blood and dirt from his eyes, that he liked to give them a sample of all our shot. On the line-of-battle vessel just abreast of us , there was a large, stout Turk, in a red flannel shirt, manning a gun on the port side almost opposite ours, and, as he was very skillful, was giving us a good deal of trouble. One of the marines, observing this, took aim with his musket and shot our stout adversary through the head, who fell backward and was left hanging over the port with his head to the side.” down, but was soon thrown overboard by the one who took his place.”

The precipitation of the battle with the Dartmouth incident and the fact that the Allies had not entered in a proper battle formation turned the battle into a chaotic battle between all the ships rather than a planned attack, as would have been the case with the larger and more heavily armed vessels in the front line—hence its name—bearing the brunt of the fire. During the four-plus hours of intense shelling, each ship acted almost alone or with the idea of assisting and combining with the nearest Allied vessels. The Trident, the Breslau, and the Scipion, for example, received fire from the coastal batteries. The Scipion was also hit by one of the few fire ships that achieved its objective while being bombarded on both sides by Egyptian frigates.

During the four long hours of intense shelling, each ship acted on its own.

According to Captain Millius's account: “This diabolical contraption, under the direction of men as skillful as they were brave, managed to hook itself onto the port bow of my ship and gradually slid under the bowsprit, between the foresail and the block. We tried in vain to push it back into the open sea. It really seemed as if it were drawn towards us by a magnetic force. The jib, bowsprit, and the fore-mast ropes became prey to the flames, which were driven aft by a rather strong breeze blowing from the south, so that they spread to the 36-gun battery through the hawse-holes and ports.”

The danger was such that the master gunner suggested wetting the ship's gunpowder before the fire ignited it and blew up the Scipion, but Captain Millius ordered them to continue to the end with their firepower intact while he tried to maneuver to disengage from the fire ship and be able to control the fire; a maneuver that was actually made possible by a boat sent by the French Trident , which was nearby and moved the incendiary ship away without Millius himself noticing.

The greater skill of the British, Russian and French crews, as well as the quality of their ships, were what decided the battle.

Thus, multiple battles took place in total disorder between the different ships, such as this one also from the Genoa: “Right at our height, with almost all their guns pointed towards us, were two of the enemy warships. A little further ahead, to starboard, there was another two-decked ship and three two-decked frigates were positioned to port and ahead, so they could cause us serious damage with their fire. A large frigate was astern and successfully riddled us for some time, until a French ship approached and relieved us, taking fire.”

The superior skill of the British, Russian, and French crews, as well as the quality of their ships, were what decided the battle, a fierce exchange of cannon fire and musket fire. Although the Ottomans also had ships of the line and frigates , only those of the Egyptian fleet could truly compare to the European ones.