[5] Upon the outbreak of the Greek Revolution in March 1821, he armed his ship Aris with 16 12-pounder guns and joined the fleet of his home island.

Anastasios Tsamados courage, inter alios, inspired Jules Verne's epic adventure novel The Archipelago on Fire (French: L'Archipel en feu, 1884).

Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt, tasked by the Ottoman sultan to suppress the Greek revolt, needed to take the island in order to use the bay for his own purposes.

In May 1825, Ibrahim Pasha and a powerful army and navy of more than fifteen hundred Egyptians landed on the island of Sphacteria only to be met with resistance by Anastasios Tsamados and his gallant band of sailors and soldiers.

The remaining Greek freedom fighters, with head the vice-governor Nikolaos Votsis, dared to be absolutely bold and sailed through a Turkish fleet of thirty-four ships.