 The British and French were also highly involved, given their interests in the Mediterranean; in November, the French agreed to back Greece with a large loan as a way of preventing Italy from acquiring the ship.Moreover, the Greek consul general in Britain claimed that the Bank of England was prepared to advance all the money needed to purchase the ship as soon as a French loan was guaranteed.Arrangements for all this took quite some time, however, and at the end of December, the Ottomans were able to secure "Rio de Janeiro" with a private loan from a French bank.