After some short service in home waters, during which he visited the Orkneys, Captain Yorke was ordered to take the _Alligator_ to the Mediterranean station, where it doubtless occurred to the authorities that the energy and ability he had shown when in command of the _Alacrity_ in Greek waters a few years earlier would be of service in the new circumstances which had arisen in that part of the world. The Greek War of Independence, which was in full progress when Captain Yorke was engaged in suppressing the piracy of which it was a chief cause in 1823-26, was now drawing to a close. In 1827 Great Britain, France, and Russia were all united in securing the independence of the country, which was recognised by a treaty between the three Powers in that year, and in January following Count Capo d'Istria was elected President of the new republic. There remained, however, the difficulty of extracting the same acknowledgment from the Sultan, and from his powerful and practically independent vassal, Mehemet Ali Pacha of Egypt, whose aid he had invoked, and whose son Ibrahim held much of the revolted country. But in 1828 the Allies at last came to an arrangement with Mehemet, and by a convention concluded by Sir Edward Codrington, that potentate agreed to evacuate the Morea and to deliver all captives. There then remained the difficult work of fixing boundaries, of taking over such parts of the country as were occupied by the Turkish and Egyptian forces, and of reconciling the inhabitants of those portions of the Hellenic territory which had not been allowed by the Powers to attain their independence to a continuance of the Turkish rule. Of these the island of Crete with its heroic Spakiotes, who had never acknowledged the Sultan as their sovereign, was perhaps the most troublesome and difficult. There remained also the incidental suppression of the piracy which still continued. This duty, as before, fell mainly to the share of Captain Yorke in the _Alligator_.