Frederick Chamier

[4]: 19–20 [6] After the campaign the Salsette was ordered to the Mediterranean and while at Smyrna on 11 April 1810 met with Lord Byron who on hearing the ship was making for Constantinople asked Captain Bathurst for a lift.

Byron took a friendly interest in the young Chamier and when the ship stopped en-route at Tenedos within sight of the plains of Troy prevailed on the captain to allow the boy ashore to carry his fowling piece.

[4]: 22–23  Once in Constantinople the young midshipman accompanied his captain to various receptions and audiences for Sir Robert Adair with the sultan Mahmud II.

[5] Effectively retired in 1827, he settled down to the life of an Essex county squire,[11] further dividing his time between his house in Halkin Street, Belgravia, and Paris.

[8] In 1831 he was engaged in editing the translated transcript of Mikhail Zagoskin's novel Dmitrich Miloslawsky to be issued in England as The Young Muscovite; or, The Poles in Russia, which apparently dated from 1824.

[12][13] At the tail end of 1831 Chamier lost a considerable sum in a failed venture the premature establishment of The Metropolitan Magazine, his friend Frederick Marryat would make something of it, later that year.

The couple wished to marry but Bessie's guardian Sir John Soane refused permission, despite Chamier, on the face of it, being a man of means; his father had left him a legacy of £10,000 and his writing at that stage was earning him £300 a year.

The couple remarried in Esher that April in an unsuccessful bid to placate the family, to no result, and went off to live in Paris From October 1832 till August 1834.

[22][6] Chamier held for some time an official post abroad,[22] but retired to Warrior Square, St Leonards-on-Sea, where he died on 29 October 1870 after a lingering illness, survived by his wife.