 Captain Andrew Snape Hamond, of HMS "Salamander", wrote that if the British had actively forestalled the French, "England might have been spared the pain of seeing the Pet Lamb she has fostered and brought snatched from her protection by unprincipled Frenchmen".In 1846, Admiral George Seymour, the British commander-in-chief of the Pacific Station, visited Raiatea and "declared all French enactments there null and void" and had a private audience with Queen Pomare.From 1846 to 1847, the British Navy officer Henry Byam Martin and commander of HMS "Grampus", was sent to the Society Islands to spy on the conflict.