By Victor Kamenir

At 2 PM on October 20, 1827, Allied squadrons sailed into the Bay of Navarino on the west coast of the Peloponnese peninsula. The warships arrived in two long columns. Commander-in-Chief Vice Admiral Edward Codrington intended to enforce an armistice on the Ottoman navy during the long drawn out Greek War of Independence. Codrington, aboard the 84-gun HMS Asia, had issued orders not to fire first on the enemy. Although outnumbered by a swarm of mostly smaller, poorly armed warships, the Allies had a number of ships of the line. The atmosphere in the harbor was terribly tense.

A group of Egyptians was preparing a fireship, and one of the British frigates dispatched a boat with men who bore a message instructing the enemy to stop the hostile act. Musket shots rang out between the two parties. An unidentified Turkish corvette swung into action, firing two shots at the French flagship Sirene. Soon the harbor roared with guns as other ships joined the spreading fight at the entrance to the Peloponnese harbor. The struggle for control of Greece was heating up again.

As the Napoleonic Wars drew to a close at the beginning of the 19th century, a wave of nationalist movements swept through eastern and southeastern Europe. Among the peoples struggling for their national identity and independence were the Greeks, who had been living under the heel of the Ottoman Empire since the late 14th century.

In February 1821, a clandestine Greek organization called The Society of Friends, or Filiki Eteria, led an open rebellion against the Ottoman rule. Vicious fighting spread throughout Greece, with no quarter given on either side. Especially heavy fighting took place in the historic Peloponnese peninsula in the south, the heartland of the rebellion. As the fortunes of war shifted back and forth, in early

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