Battle of Navarino

On 20 October 1827, in the sheltered bay of Navarino (today's Pylos) in the south-western Peloponnese, a combined British, French and Russian squadron destroyed the Ottoman and Egyptian fleet that was helping to crush the Greek revolt. The clash was not planned by the governments that sent the ships, but it removed Ottoman naval power from Greek waters and opened the way to an independent Greece. It is also remembered as the last major naval battle fought wholly between sailing ships.

The Greeks had risen against Ottoman rule in 1821, starting the Greek War of Independence. After several years of deadlock, the sultan called on his powerful governor of Egypt, Muhammad Ali, whose modern army and navy shifted the balance. In February 1825 Muhammad Ali's son Ibrahim Pasha landed in the Peloponnese with 16,000 men and overran much of it. By 1827 the rebel government was nearly bankrupt and its regular troops numbered under 5,000, against perhaps 25,000 Ottoman soldiers in central Greece, with another 15,000 Egyptian troops in the Peloponnese.

Public sympathy for the Greeks ran high in Britain, and the new tsar Nicholas I was more willing than his predecessor to act. Fearing that Russia would intervene alone and dominate the eastern Mediterranean, Britain and France joined it in the Treaty of London of 6 July 1827. The three powers demanded an armistice and autonomy for Greece under continued Ottoman suzerainty, and authorised their admirals to enforce it while avoiding taking sides. The Ottomans rejected the terms on 29 August, while the Greek government accepted.

The British commander, Vice-Admiral Sir Edward Codrington, a veteran of Trafalgar with Greek sympathies, was ordered to block reinforcements to the Ottoman forces in Greece. A large Ottoman–Egyptian fleet had reached Navarino in early September. As Ibrahim's troops burned villages ashore, Codrington, joined by French and Russian squadrons under Henri de Rigny and van Heiden, decided on 18 October to sail into the bay and anchor among the enemy ships as a show of force.

The allies had 22 ships with 1,258 guns, against 78 Ottoman and Egyptian vessels carrying 2,180 guns, but the allies had ten ships of the line against only three on the Ottoman side, heavier guns and veteran crews. The Ottoman fleet lay in a horseshoe across the bay. The allied ships entered on the afternoon of 20 October. According to the allied account, firing began at the bay's mouth when a British boat sent to stop a fireship being readied came under fire, and the fighting spread along the lines. Most ships fought at anchor at close range. By about 4 p.m. the largest Ottoman ships were out of action, and within two more hours almost the whole fleet had been sunk, burned or scuttled by its own crews.

Only eight of the 78 vessels remained seaworthy. Ottoman losses were reported as around 3,000 killed and 1,109 wounded, though Codrington suspected the true proportions were the other way round. He gave allied losses as 181 killed and 480 wounded; several allied ships were badly damaged, but apparently none was sunk.

The battle did not end the war on land. Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire in April 1828, and Egyptian forces left the Peloponnese in October 1828 after a French expedition landed. By the Treaty of Adrianople in 1829 the sultan accepted Greek autonomy, and in 1830 the powers agreed to full independence, which the Ottomans formally recognised in 1832. In Britain, the government regarded Codrington as having exceeded his orders and relieved him of his command in 1828.

Our 1815 map shows Greece still within the Ottoman Empire, and the 1878 map shows the independent Greek kingdom.