History

The Bay of Navarino is an almost landlocked bay of the Ionian Sea in the southwestern Peloponnese. The bay was the scene of a decisive battle in 1827 that consolidated the independence of Greece. Here, the combined fleets of Great Britain, France, and Russia destroyed the Turko-Egyptian fleet. The historic island of Sphaktiria, scene of an engagement in the Peloponnesian War, functions as a giant breakwater for the bay’s inner lagoon or shipping lane, leaving a broad channel on the south and the Sikiás Channel on the north. The bay is one of the safest anchorages in the Mediterranean.

The famous Sea Battle of Navarino, which took place on October 20, 1827, was a decisive naval engagement of the War of Greek Independence against Turkey. The Turks, with assistance from Egypt, had gained the upper hand in the Greek Independence War, but then Britain, France and Russia intervened, leading to the defeat of the Turkish and Egyptian navies in the last fleet action of the sailing-ship era.

The Greek struggle for independence won considerable popular support in Britain and France; Russia was traditionally hostile to Turkey and sympathetic to its Orthodox coreligionists in Greece. Faced with the prospect of a Greek defeat and reports of massacres of the Greek population, the allied powers each sent a naval squadron to back up their calls for an armistice. Commanding the Egyptian-Turkish fleet was Tahir Pasha; the allied force of British, French, and Russian ships was under Admiral Sir Edward Codrington.

After a blockade of the Turkish and Egyptian fleet in Navarino Bay, on the west coast of the Peloponnese in the Ionian Sea, had no effect, Codrington agreed with his allies to sail into the bay and force the Turko-Egyptians to either agree to an armistice or have their ships destroyed. Although the allied fleet (11 ships of the line, 9 frigates, and 4 smaller ships) was outnumbered by the Egyptian-Turkish fleet (3 ships of the line, 15 frigates, and more than 50 smaller ships), most of the latter were small and poorly armed. Sailing past shore batteries, the allies anchored among the Turkish and Egyptian ships and tried to open negotiations-they had orders not to fire first. The Turks unwisely fired on a boat carrying a British message, whereupon the whole allied fleet fired in return.

It was a hopelessly one-sided combat. The British and French gunnery in particular was vastly superior. Within a couple of hours about three-fourths of the Turkish and Egyptian ships had been sunk or set on fire by their own crews to avoid capture; no European ships were sunk. It was the last significant battle between traditional wooden sailing ships.

The Turks’ defeat was so complete that within 10 months they began to evacuate Greece, an action that led to the creation of the independent Kingdom of Greece in 1832.

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