An 1830 account details that the diamond was purchased in London by an agent of Muhammad Ali for Mahmud, and then taken by a British admiral in his coat pocket to the Royal Navy's naval port in Portsmouth, from where he was to depart for the Mediterranean. Although England was one of the European nations that intervened on behalf of Greece and defeated the Ottoman fleet in the 1827 Battle of Navarino, it maintained cordial relations with the Ottomans in the earlier part of the conflict when the diamond was most likely sold.