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At the age of 11, Hastings had taken part at the Battle of Trafalgar on HMS Neptune. He rose to commander until 1820 when due to an incident with a senior officer he was Hastingscompelled to leave the service. A great philhellene, in 1822 he went to Greece to serve on Tombazis’s ship "Themistoklis". In 1824, he managed to secure £10,000 of the £2,000,000 of the second Greek loan from England, to finance Karteria; he paid for her guns himself. A year later, he was appointed commander-in-chief of the Greek revolutionary navy.

Karteria was classified as a four-masted sloop-of-war that operated under sail while travelling, but could be propelled by steam-powered paddles in battle. Captained by Hastings, armed with 68-pounder guns and equipped with on-board furnaces to provide red-hot incendiary shots, Karteria was deadly against the older wood and sail ships of the Ottoman navy. In 1827 alone, she fired 18,000 rounds and sank several enemy ships.

Karteria is most notable for being the first steam warship in the world to be used in battle (the first steam warship built was the American USS Demologos from 1814). Apart from Karteria, five more steam warships were ordered. Two of them, "Epiheirisis" and "Ermis" entered Greek service before the war was over, one blew up during trials and two were never completed and were left to rot on the Thames.

Materials used for construction are described by Hastings, in his Memoir of 1828:

" The ‘Karteria’ was built with her timbers close and caulked together, and would therefore, have floated without planking. I had several opportunities of remarking the advantage of building thus, to resist shot; nothing less than a eighteen pounder ever came through us; this, ’tis true, might be partly attributed to Turkish bad powder, but those shot that did come through, always made a nice clean round hole without a splinter. However, against shells it would have a disadvantage, as they would be more likely to stick in it. Perhaps if shells became generally used, it will be proper to make the upper works of a ship as slight as is consistent with strength, and iron ribs might perhaps be good. The ‘Karteria’ had another peculiarity in her build – two solid bulkheads enclosing the engine room, and caulked and lined, so as to be water tight, the intention of this was, in the event of one part of the ship being leaky from any cause whatever, the water could not flow into another part of the ship. This arrangement, which is due to the ingenuity of Mr Brent, the builder, once saved this ship from fire, which broke out with great force in the after-part of the engine room, and would have communicated to the shell room very quickly. But for this bulkhead, which kept the fire forward, and gave us time to subdue it. I see no reason why all men of war should not be furnished with similar partitions. The same builder saved another ship (the Rising Star) from sinking, by this contrivance."

Specifications:

Displacement: 233 tons

Propulsion: two steam enginers of 85hp and four masts with schooner rigging

Consumption: 7 tons of coal per day

Speed: 7 knots

Length: 38.4m

Width: 7.6m

Armament:

4 x 68-pounder carronades and 4 x 68-pounder guns of a new design based on a model by Frank Hastings

Crew:

185 (17 officers, 22 petty officers, 32 gunners, 110 sailors and 4 cooks-cabin boys)

Pictures and a plan: