What happened at the Battle of Navarino in 1827?

On October 20, 1827, an allied British, French, and Russian fleet entered the Bay of Navarino under orders to enforce a Greek ceasefire without fighting. After a skirmish ignited point-blank combat, the Allies destroyed over sixty Ottoman and Egyptian ships in four hours without losing a single vessel, paving the way for Greek independence.

Who commanded the Allied fleet at the Battle of Navarino?

British Vice Admiral Sir Edward Codrington held overall command of the twenty-seven Allied warships from his flagship, HMS Asia. The French squadron served alongside him, while Russian naval forces were commanded by Count Lodewijk van Heiden, whose flagship Azov was captained by Mikhail Lazarev.

What caused the fighting to start at the Battle of Navarino?

Combat began when Captain Thomas Fellowes of HMS Dartmouth dispatched an unarmed cutter under Lieutenant George William Fitzroy to ask Ottoman fireships to reposition. Fearing a boarding attempt, Ottoman defenders fired and killed Fitzroy, sparking musket fire, shore cannon volleys, and full broadsides across the tightly packed harbor.

Why was the Battle of Navarino called an untoward event?

King George IV described the victory as an "untoward event" in January 1828 because the British government feared a crushed Ottoman fleet left the region vulnerable to Russian expansion. Prime Minister the Duke of Wellington viewed the battle as a diplomatic disaster, and Vice Admiral Sir Edward Codrington was recalled.

The Battle of Navarino on October 20, 1827

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An Impossible Mandate

Greek War of Independence rages since 1821

Treaty of London, July 1827: Britain, France, Russia demand armistice

Codrington ordered to coerce peace without hostility

Ada: It's the autumn of eighteen twenty-seven, off the southwest coast of Greece. The Greek revolt against Ottoman rule has been grinding on for six years, and Egyptian troops under Ibrahim Pasha are burning their way across the Peloponnese.³⁵

Theo: And I'm Theo, glad you're with us. So where do we come in?

Ada: I'm Ada, and today we follow one admiral given orders so contradictory they couldn't possibly be obeyed, and how that paradox ended up birthing modern Greece. Three great powers, Britain, France and Russia, had just signed the Treaty of London, demanding a ceasefire.¹³

Theo: Let me guess, the Ottomans weren't interested in a ceasefire.

Ada: Not remotely. So Vice Admiral Sir Edward Codrington got the job of enforcing peace with twenty-seven warships, told to stop supplies, but avoid any hostile spirit. Force only as a last resort.³⁵

Theo: That's a knife-edge. How do you threaten someone into peace without actually fighting?

Ada: That was exactly the trap. And when autumn gales made blockading the open sea impossible, Codrington pointed his fleet directly into the enemy harbor.⁴

The Horseshoe at Navarino

Bay sheltered by Sphacteria, 600-yard entrance

78 to 89 Ottoman-Egyptian vessels, ~2,000 guns

Three concentric lines designed by French adviser Letellier

Ada: The Bay of Navarino, modern Pylos, is a near-perfect natural harbor, sheltered by the long island of Sphacteria, with an entrance only about six hundred yards wide.⁴⁵

Theo: So a narrow door into a closed room. And the Ottoman fleet was already inside?

Ada: Packed inside. The combined Ottoman and Egyptian fleet under Muharram Bey and Tahir Pasha, somewhere between seventy-eight and eighty-nine vessels, mounting around two thousand guns.³⁵

Theo: That dwarfs Codrington's twenty-seven. How is he not just outnumbered into oblivion?

Ada: Because numbers lie here. Most of theirs were lighter frigates, corvettes and fireships. Codrington had eleven ships of the line, the heavy hitters, oak-walled and brutal at close range.³⁵

Theo: Still, inside their own harbor, with shore guns too, surely they held every advantage.

Ada: They did. They'd moored in three concentric horseshoe lines, backed by coastal batteries with a hundred and twenty-five guns. And here's the clever part, a French naval adviser, Chevalier Letellier, had helped design it.³⁵

Theo: A Frenchman building the Ottoman defenses, while France is one of the three powers sailing in. That's awkward.

Ada: Deeply. He arranged the ships so the rear lines could fire through the gaps in the front line. A layered killing zone, every vessel covering its neighbor.³

Theo: So Codrington is about to sail his fleet into a loaded crossbow and drop anchor inside it.

Anchoring in the Trap

Allied fleet enters ~2 p.m., October 20, 1827

Codrington: 'I am come to give orders, not to receive them'

Anchored at pistol-shot, sails set, no first shot allowed

Ada: Around two in the afternoon on October twentieth, the Allied fleet threads that narrow entrance in two parallel columns. British and French on the right, Russians under Count Lodewijk van Heiden on the left.⁵⁶

Theo: And nobody fires? That's incredible restraint on both sides.

Ada: That's the whole plan. An Ottoman launch rows out to the flagship, HMS Asia, carrying a message from Ibrahim Pasha, refusing them permission to enter.⁵⁸

Theo: What does Codrington say to that?

Ada: He sends back one line: 'I am come to give orders, not to receive them.' And he keeps sailing in.⁵⁸

Theo: Cold. So where exactly does he park?

Ada: Right alongside the Ottoman ships. Allied vessels drop anchor without even furling their sails, guns run out, crews at battle stations, but under strict orders not to fire unless fired upon.⁵⁶

Theo: Wait, sails still set? Why not furl them?

Ada: Because if it turns ugly, you can't trim sail under fire. They anchored ready for anything. Opposing battle fleets, now within pistol-shot, in a sealed basin.⁴⁷

Theo: That's not a standoff, that's two people holding loaded pistols to each other's heads and calling it diplomacy.

Ada: Exactly. With two hundred cannons pointed at point-blank range, a single drifting boat pushed peace past the breaking point.

The Cutter from the Dartmouth

HMS Dartmouth sends cutter to move Ottoman fireships

Lt. George Fitzroy and sailors killed by musket fire

Interpreter Petros Mikelis fired upon during parley

Ada: So picture the stillness. Hundreds of guns silent, everyone waiting. The captain of HMS Dartmouth, Thomas Fellowes, notices Ottoman fireships drifting dangerously close to the French and British vessels.⁴⁵

Theo: Fireships being, what, floating bombs?

Ada: Essentially. Hulls packed with combustibles, set alight and steered into enemy ships. If one grappled onto a ship of the line, it could take the whole thing down. Fellowes wanted them moved, peacefully.

Theo: So he doesn't open fire, he sends a polite request?

Ada: He sends a cutter, a small boat, under Lieutenant George William Fitzroy, just to ask them to shift position. No guns, a courtesy.⁴⁵

Theo: And the Ottomans read that completely differently.

Ada: They did. The defenders suspected the boat was coming to cut their cables or board them, and they fired musketry straight into the cutter. Fitzroy and several sailors were killed.⁴⁵

Theo: That's the spark. One misread rowboat.

Ada: That's the spark. And here accounts genuinely differ, whether that first volley was ordered by Ottoman commanders, or was the unauthorized panic of a single sentry. Nobody can say for certain.

Theo: Either way, you can't un-fire it.

Ada: No. Dartmouth answered with musketry. Then an Ottoman corvette put two roundshot into the French flagship Sirene. And on the Asia, an Ottoman vessel fired on Codrington's interpreter, Petros Mikelis, while he was trying to parley.³⁶

Theo: They shot the translator. The one man whose whole job was to prevent this.

Ada: Yes. And that was it. The Asia replied with full broadsides. The diplomats had ordered intimidation without war, but once a single trigger was pulled in that closed basin, a peaceful outcome was physically impossible.³⁶

Theo: The geometry of the thing made the orders meaningless.

Four Hours in the Furnace

Battle fought at anchor, ~2 to 6 p.m.

Russian flagship Azov sank two frigates alone

60+ Ottoman ships lost; Allies lost none, 181 killed

Ada: From roughly two in the afternoon until six in the evening, it was carnage, fought entirely at anchor. No maneuvering, just ships blasting each other from a few yards away.³⁶

Theo: And this is where that quality gap matters, the heavy ships against the light ones.

Ada: Brutally so. The Allied ships of the line simply crushed the lighter Ottoman wood. The Russian flagship Azov, under Mikhail Lazarev, took on up to five enemy vessels at once and sank two frigates.³⁵

Theo: What was it actually like inside one of those hulls?

Ada: Codrington's own son Henry, a wounded midshipman, described the cockpit below decks as hot as an oven, full of screams and shattered limbs. On HMS Albion, a lieutenant logged ten killed, ten amputations, and seventeen splinter wounds on that one ship.¹⁸

Theo: And the Ottoman side?

Ada: Annihilation. Over sixty of their ships burned, sank, or were blown up by their own crews to deny them to the enemy. Casualty estimates range, accounts differ, from around four thousand to over six thousand killed or wounded.²³

Theo: Why such a wide range?

Ada: Because the fleet registers were destroyed and whole crews burned with their scuttled ships. There was no one left to count. The Allies, by contrast, lost not a single ship. A hundred and eighty-one dead.²⁴

Theo: That's not a battle, that's a demolition. And this was the last of its kind, wasn't it?

Ada: It was. The last major fleet battle fought entirely under sail. As the smoke drifted over eighty burning hulks, courier boats set sail to carry news of an unauthorized victory back to London.²³

The Untoward Event

King George IV called Navarino an 'untoward event'

Wellington saw the Ottomans as a barrier to Russia

Codrington censured and recalled despite securing Greek independence

Ada: Now imagine the reactions landing across Europe. In France, the public celebrated. In Russia, the government saw a weakened Ottoman Empire and declared formal war the very next year, eighteen twenty-eight.⁵

Theo: And Britain? You'd think they'd be throwing parties for their own admiral.

Ada: The opposite. The British establishment was horrified. Prime Minister the Duke of Wellington considered the Ottoman Empire an essential barrier against Russian expansion, and Codrington had just smashed it to splinters.⁵

Theo: So the man who won is suddenly a problem.

Ada: A serious one. King George the Fourth, in his throne speech in January eighteen twenty-eight, called Navarino an 'untoward event'. That phrase is where our title comes from.⁵

Theo: An untoward event. That's an astonishing way to describe destroying an entire enemy fleet without losing a ship.

Ada: And it got worse for Codrington. He faced an official inquiry, was censured for misinterpreting his instructions, and was recalled in eighteen twenty-eight.³⁵

Theo: Punished for the victory that created Greece. And there's that lovely legend, isn't there, about the note on his orders?

Ada: There is. Popular tradition says the Lord High Admiral, the Duke of Clarence, the future William the Fourth, scribbled 'Go it, Ned' in pencil on Codrington's orders. But historians dispute whether that note ever existed, or was just wardroom folklore.⁷

Theo: So the whole thing hangs together on misreadings. A misread rowboat, misread orders, maybe a misremembered pencil note.

Ada: That's the heart of it. Three fleets came to prevent a war without firing a shot, and accidentally guaranteed a nation's independence in four hours. The two turns that mattered most were decisions nobody fully made, the first musket volley and a flagship's broadside, both reactions, not plans.

Theo: It says something about how much of history isn't chosen, it just, happens, and then everyone argues about who meant it.

Ada: Beautifully put. And if the Russian war that followed in eighteen twenty-eight catches your ear, that's a whole story of its own, one tap away whenever you want it.⁵

Theo: As always, you can interrupt any time and ask us anything, mid-battle, mid-sentence, we don't mind.

Ada: This was Historai, where history answers back.