Bozcaada (1615, Henri de Beauvau) Lord Stratford Canning (1786-1880) served as the British ambassador in Istanbul for a long time. Born in London in 1786, Canning was educated at Cambridge University. He entered the service of the Foreign Office in 1807, traveled to Denmark on duty the same year, and visited Istanbul for the first time on a mission in 1808. In 1825, he was sent to Istanbul as an ambassador, but hurriedly returned to his country in 1827 due to the Battle of Navarino, where the British fleet joined forces with Russia to destroy the Ottoman fleet. He was sent again as an envoy to Istanbul in 1831, but served only for 1 year. As the ambassador of the United Kingdom, Stratford Canning became the most powerful foreign statesman in Istanbul and tried to interfere in the internal affairs of the Ottoman Empire by forming a friendship with Mustafa Reşit Pasha. During his first visit in 1808, while on a diplomatic mission, his path crossed through Çanakkale in the Ottoman lands:
"We were surrounded on all sides by memories of Ancient Greece. From the deck, we could see the vast plain of Troy, with Ida and Gargara behind it. Along the coast extending to the entrance of the strait, the fortresses of Çanak rose, and in one place, the tomb of Antilochos. Behind us were the islands of Bozcaada (Tenedos), and on our starboard side were the islands of Gökçeada (Imbros) and Semadirek (Samothrake). At sunset, we could faintly see the island of Limni in the distance. This journey to Istanbul, made in those days without the conveniences of steamships, was indeed tiring, but we consoled ourselves by absorbing the beauty that not everyone was fortunate enough to see. Occasionally, we would hunt in the vineyards of Tenedos, which the Russians had captured a few months earlier and then abandoned, or inquire about news from passing merchant ships. We could find baskets of grapes for next to nothing."
