An innovator concerned with the development of iron ships, and an advocate of humane reform in the Royal Navy, he was also active in politics as a Liberal Member of Parliament and was probably the naval officer most widely known to the public in the early Victorian Era.

(In later years, feeling he had been badly treated as a midshipman by her captain, Charles Fleeming, Napier challenged that officer to a duel, though they were eventually reconciled by their seconds.

In 1811, he was appointed captain of the frigate HMS Thames (32 guns) and served in the Mediterranean Fleet under Sir Edward Pellew, disrupting enemy shipping.

After the surrender of Napoleon and his first period of exile in 1814, Napier and his ship were transferred to the coast of North America, where the War of 1812 with the United States was still in progress, now commanded by Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane.

In the Chesapeake Bay campaign, he took part in the August expedition up the Potomac River to Alexandria (southeast of the American national capital), Arriving several days after the Burning of Washington and the Battle of Bladensburg under Maj. Gen. Robert Ross and Rear Admiral Sir George Cockburn, he was second in command to Captain James Alexander Gordon.

HMS Euryalus was involved in the bombardment of Fort McHenry, protecting the city on the Northwest Branch of the Patapsco River that began early in the morning of the 13th.

The critical period of the attack developed shortly after midnight when a picked British force in longboats armed with scaling ladders under Napier's command penetrated the Middle or Ferry Branch of the river along the southern opposite shore (today's Brooklyn and Fairfield areas of southern Baltimore City and Anne Arundel County) to the west of the fort with the intention of storming it from the rear flank.

(Watching the battle from a safe distance, Georgetown lawyer and poet Francis Scott Key, who had been attempting to free William Beanes, arrested earlier for jailing British Army deserters, was inspired to compose the poem, "The Defence of Fort McHenry", which was later set to music as The Star-Spangled Banner).

The eldest, Edward Elers Napier, entered the army, rising to the rank of major-general: he also wrote books of travel and reminiscence, as well as the authoritative biography of his stepfather.

After trials in May 1822, the Aaron Manby crossed the English Channel to Le Havre under Napier's command on 10 June 1822, and proceeded up the Seine to Paris, where she caused a great stir and where she was based for the next decade.

Sailing to Portugal with his stepson Charles Elers Napier as aide-de-camp, bringing troop reinforcements and using the incognito of 'Carlos da Ponza', he arrived in Porto, where Queen Maria's father Dom Pedro, ex-Emperor of Brazil, and the Liberal forces were being besieged by Miguel's armies.

After the final defeat of Miguel and the death of Dom Pedro shortly afterwards, Napier found himself frustrated in his attempts to reform the naval administration of Portugal and returned to England.

He was restored to his former rank of captain in the British Navy List by an Order in Council on 9 March 1836,[6] and in July 1837 unsuccessfully contested the by-election for Greenwich in the Liberal cause.

In the summer of 1840 the Maronite Christians of Lebanon rose in revolt against the occupying Egyptians and Muhammad Ali in retaliation sent Ibrahim Pasha with 15,000 troops to burn towns and villages along the Lebanese coast.

Though in August he appeared off Beirut and called upon Suleiman Pasha, Muhammad Ali's governor, to abandon the town and leave Syria, there was little he could do until September, when he was joined by the allied fleet under Admiral Robert Stopford: mainly British, but also including Austrian, Ottoman and Russian warships.

While preparing to attack them at Boharsef, Napier was ordered to relinquish command of the army to withdraw and hand over the land forces to the now recovered Brigadier-General Smith.

During the action, Napier had manoeuvred independently against Stopford's orders and his division, by accident and mutual misunderstandings, left a space in the fleet's deployment, not that this affected the outcome.

The rapid collapse of Muhammad Ali's power, with the prospect of bloody chaos in Egypt, was not part of the Allies' plan, so Stopford sent Napier to command the squadron at Alexandria and to observe the situation.

[8] Stopford repudiated the arrangement immediately when he had heard the news; the Sultan and the British ambassador were furious, and several of the Allied powers declared it void.

This led Napier to write more angry letters to the newspapers and directly to Prime Minister Lord John Russell claiming that he had been defrauded of his just rights.

Napier's force, which was augmented in June by a French fleet sent by Napoleon III and commanded by Alexandre Ferdinand Parseval-Deschenes, though impressive on paper, was radically unsuited to operations in the Baltic Sea and chronically short of men and especially of experienced seamen.

During the campaign the first ever Victoria Cross was won by midshipman Charles Davis Lucas of the gunboat Hecla, who threw a Russian explosive shell overboard before it could detonate.

His inaction was thoroughly justified by the sequel: in 1855 a better-equipped Anglo-French fleet did bombard Sveaborg, but despite an enormous expenditure of ammunition caused the fortress only trifling structural damage.

In fact the Naval Lords were reacting to adverse press coverage and unwilling to accept the assessment of the commander on the spot, and relations between them deteriorated as his ships maintained the blockade in atrocious weather, quite unable to storm or destroy impregnable Russian fortresses into the bargain.

On Napier's return from the Baltic to Britain in December 1854 he was ordered to haul down his flag and informed his command was terminated,[12] the fleet being given for the campaign of 1855 to Admiral the Hon.

(None of the flag officers of the 1854 campaign was allowed to return to the Baltic in 1855, but Sir Michael Seymour, Napier's Captain of the Fleet, was promoted to rear-admiral and was made second-in-command to Dundas.)

Nevertheless, some of the leading seamen in the fleet, such as Captain (later Admiral) Sir Bartholomew Sulivan, maintained along with him that Napier's strategy had been wise and the faults lay with the Admiralty themselves.

After the war the Russians testified that, knowing Napier's reputation, their main hope had been of his making a foolhardy attack on their fleet under the guns of Kronstadt, where they were confident he would have come to grief.

He continued to campaign vigorously for improvements in the way common seamen were treated during and after service, and maintained his parliamentary seat, though broken in health, until his death on 6 November 1860.

He caused great offence to many of his brother officers by his behaviour to his superior, Admiral Stopford, in the Syrian War, and was embroiled all his life in quarrels with the Admiralty.