HASTINGS, FRANK ABNEY (1 794-1828), British naval officer and phil-Hellene, was son of Lieut.-gen. Sir Charles Hast ings, a natural son of Francis Hastings, tenth earl of Huntingdon. He served in the navy from 1805 to 1820. In 1822 he joined the Greek service. For two years he took part in the naval opera tions in the Gulf of Smyrna and elsewhere. He saw that the light squadrons of the Greeks must in the end be overpowered by the heavier Turkish navy, clumsy as it was; and in 1823 he drew up and presented to Lord Byron an able memorandum which was laid before the Greek Government in 1824. This paper contains the germs of the great revolution afterwards effected in naval gunnery and tactics. In substance the memorandum advocated the use of steamers in preference to sailing ships, and of ,direct fire with shells and hot shot, as a more trustworthy means of destroying the Turkish fleet than fire-ships.
The application of Hastings's ideas led necessarily to the disuse of sailing ships, and the introduction of armour. Largely by the use of his own money, of which he is said to have spent f 7,000, he was able to some extent to carry out his bold plans. In 1824 he came to England to obtain a steamer, and in 1825 he had fitted out a small steamer named the "Karteria" (Perseverance), manned by Englishmen, Swedes and Greeks, and provided with apparatus for the discharge of shell and hot shot. The effect pro duced by his shells in an attack on the sea-line of communication of the Turkish army, then besieging Athens at Oropus and Volo in March and April 1827, proved the truth of his contention. After the defeat of the Greeks round Athens, Hastings, in co operation with General Sir R. Church (q.v.), shifted the scene of the attack to western Greece. Here his destruction of a small Turkish squadron at Salona Bay in the Gulf of Corinth (Sept. 29, 1827.) provoked Ibrahim Pasha into the aggressive move ments which led to the destruction of his fleet by the allies at Navarino (q.v.) on Oct. 20, 1827. On May 25, 1828, Hastings was wounded in an attack on Anatolikon, and he died in the har bour of Zante on June 1.
See T. Gordon, History of the Greek Revolution (1832) ; G. Finlay, History of the Greek Revolution (Edinburgh, 186i).