HMS London was a two-decker 90-gun second-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 28 September 1840 at Chatham Dockyard.

In 1880 Lieutenant Charles Stewart Smith, an officer on another ship, led patrols which captured seven dhows and 185 enslaved people.

[2] In 1883, three years later, Lieutenant Smith was seconded to the post of Vice-Consul, Zanzibar to Sir John Kirk, the British Consul-General.

Sir Lloyd William Mathews led a force to Wete on Pemba and, after a short battle, took a mortally wounded bin Hattem (Hindi-bin-Khartoum[4]) prisoner before returning to Zanzibar.

In the eyes of the commander of HMS London, it put the British Royal Navy "in an awkward position" because it would be very difficult to make similar requests in the future.