On the 20th December 1847 Her Majesty’s steam frigate “Avenger” was wrecked on the Tunisian coast. Lieutenant Francis Rooke and three other persons were the sole survivors of the catastrophe. Mahmoud Ben Ayad, one of the Bey’s ministers, now acquired complete influence over his mind, and in the short space of two years succeeded in reducing the finances of the Regency to a state of hopeless confusion. Under the pretence of raising a loan for the Government he obtained permission to quit the country, to which he never returned. About one year previously his father and nephew had been obliged to seek refuge in the British Consulate from his persecution, and Lord Palmerston ordered Sir Thomas Reade to give them protection and inform the Bey that the Queen would not “allow a hair of their heads to be touched.” The Ben Ayads were once hereditary rulers of Jerba, and belong to one of the few remaining families of the ancient Arab nobility. They have ever since been considered British subjects, and the nephew, General Sy Hamida, is still alive, and prior to the crisis of the 12th May was one of the most trusted councillors of Muhamed es Sadek Bey. The fall of Louis Philippe seems to have brought about a lull in the constant interference of France in the destinies of the country. Sir Stratford Canning succeeded in placing the relations between Turkey and Tunis on a more friendly footing, and by a judicious explanation of the real interests of suzerain and vassal, counteracted the distrust sown in the minds of both by parties interested in promoting discord. In the summer of 1849 Sidi Muhamed, Governor of the Sahel, was sent as an envoy to offer to the Sultan presents of the value of £66,000. Sir Thomas Reade was then on his deathbed, but the jewels and other articles of value were brought to his house to satisfy him that Sidi Ahmed was once more acting in accordance with his advice. Three weeks later Sir Thomas Reade died. By the especial desire of Ahmed Bey his remains were honoured with as splendid a public funeral as the resources of the Regency permitted. General Kheir-ed-Din, now an ex-Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire, commanded the guard of honour which escorted the coffin from the Manonba to Tunis. No British representative ever understood the important questions bound up in the future of Tunis more thoroughly than he did, nor have any before or since striven more manfully to support what he conceived to be the English view of the case. Thirty-three years later, his son and successor, Thomas Fellowes Reade, saw the realisation of his father’s misgivings, as to what would inevitably happen, whenever England came to view with indifference the fate of her once faithful ally the Bey of Tunis.