Frank Abney Hastings

Frank Abney Hastings (Greek: Φραγκίσκος Άστιγξ) (14 February 1794 – 1 June 1828) was a British naval officer and Philhellene.

He was the son of Lieut.-general Sir Charles Hastings of Willesley Hall, a natural son of Francis Hastings, 10th Earl of Huntingdon. He entered the navy in 1805, and was in the Neptune (100) at the Battle of Trafalgar; but in 1820 a quarrel with his flag captain led to his leaving the service. The revolutionary troubles of the time offered chances of foreign employment. Hastings spent a year on the continent to learn French, and sailed for Greece on 12 March 1822 from Marseilles. On 3 April he reached Hydra. For two years he took part in the naval operations of the Greeks in the Gulf of Smyrna and elsewhere.

He saw that the light squadrons of the Greeks must in the end be overpowered by the heavier Turkish navy, clumsy as it was; and in 1823 he drew up and presented to Lord Byron a very able memorandum which he laid before the Greek government in 1824. This paper is of particular interest apart from its importance in the Greek insurrection, for it contains the germs of the great revolution which has since been effected in naval gunnery and tactics. In substance the memorandum advocated the use of steamers in preference to sailing ships, and of direct fire with shells and hot shot, as a more trustworthy means of destroying the Turkish fleet than fire-ships. It will be found in George Finlay's History of the Greek Revolution, vol. ii. appendix i. Lack of resources prevented the full application of Hastings's plans; but by the use of his own money, of which he is said to have spent £7,000, he was able to some extent to carry them out.

In 1824, he came to England to obtain a steamer, and in 1825 he had fitted out a small steamer named the Karteria ("Perseverance"), manned by Englishmen, Swedes and Greeks, and provided with apparatus for the discharge of shell and hot shot. He did enough to show that if his advice had been vigorously followed the Turks would have been driven off the sea long before the date of the battle of Navarino. The great effect produced by his shells in an attack on the sea-line of communication of the Turkish army, then besieging Athens at Oropos and Volos in March and April 1827, was a clear proof that much more could have been done.

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