E. Duncan’s ‘Nemesis destroying the Chinese war junks in Anson’s Bay’[1], painted in 1843, is surely one of the most vivid depictions of the First Opium War, a conflict which has since come to epitomize British gunboat diplomacy. The artist chose an interesting perspective, one that Chinese observers on shore might have experienced at the time. Duncan’s focus is not on the design of the ship but rather on its destructive power. The centre shows an explosion of almost volcanic intensity; of sufficient power to snap the junk’s masts in two and send debris, possibly of the human kind, high into the sky. The source of this destruction can be discerned in the vapour trail looping away from the British warship; not the trajectory one would expect from a broadside cannon. The Chinese ships, while brightly painted and proudly flying pennants, are shown to be in disarray, the two rowing boats almost colliding with one another and a piece of flotsam. The Nemesis is depicted side-on, without sails, defying a tailwind, imperiously blocking the channel. While appearing smaller in perspective to the Chinese vessels, it is very clear to the viewer who has command of the seaway. Apart from the actions of a small supporting gunboat to the right, the Nemesis seems to be winning the battle almost single-handedly, the other ships in her squadron appearing some way distant.
The Nemesis was built by William Laird & Sons of Birkenhead for the Honourable East India Company (HEIC) at a time when the Royal Navy was yet to be convinced of the value of all iron warships. The reason for this was that iron hulls had been shown to fragment when impacted by heavy shells. This revelation led the Admiralty to convert some of its earliest iron warships into troopships; one of these being the infamous HMS Birkenhead.[2] Smaller iron steam vessels had been around since the 1820s, and iron barges long before that, but it wasn’t until the late 1830s that ocean-going iron ships started to appear. The Nemesis was very much part of this early group, being the first iron vessel to round the Cape of Good Hope on its way to the Far East.
At 660 tons and 184ft in length, the Nemesis wasn’t especially big. (The SS Great Britain, which appeared a couple of years later, was almost 3,500 tons and 300ft.) Neither was she particularly well-armed in comparison to existing wooden ships of her size. One of the drawbacks of early steam vessels was the position of paddle wheels amidships, which reduced the space available for broadside-firing cannons. This was perhaps one of the reasons she was equipped with Congreve Rockets, which were fired from the weather deck.
Another of Nemesis’s interesting design features was her flattened keel, which made her particularly useful in the shallow river deltas of China. Having only a 6ft draft meant she could operate much closer to shore than wooden warships, which drew almost twice as much in water. However, out at sea this feature was a serious handicap, potentially causing the ship to ‘broach’, or be blown sideways. To prevent this, Nemesis had two wooden false keels that could be lowered in deeper waters.
The vessel had an eventful maiden voyage, running aground off Cornwall and broaching off South Africa. Her steam engines were under-powered and much of the journey had to undertaken with sail. It took her three months just to reach Cape Town, where she spent a further three weeks undergoing repairs. Having finally reached the Pearl River Delta, she struck a submerged rock. Fortunately, another of her innovations was in having seven watertight compartments.
Although a HEIC-owned warship built for service in its private ‘Indian Navy’, the Nemesis was captained by a Royal Navy man, William Hutcheon Hall. As a young man, Hall had visited China as part of the Amherst Embassy in 1816, a trip had ended farcically when the British delegation had refused to kow-tow to the emperor. Hall had gained his experience with steam navigation on American river systems; the Hudson and Delaware. Illustrative of the close association of government and commerce in the 19th century, Hall sailed to the East under secret government orders. In June 1839, Chinese authorities had outlawed opium imports and confiscated 20,000 chests of the stuff from British merchants, triggering the intervention of the British government. The British plenipotentiary, Charles Elliot, was charged with obtaining compensation for the merchants and reopening Canton and other ports to the opium trade. When the Chinese refused to meet the British demands, Elliot resorted to punitive measures, utilising a combination of traditional Royal Navy sail and innovative Indian Navy steam; the HEIC having pioneered the use of steamers for the purposes of surveying and anti-piracy operations.
The engagement between Nemesis and the junks took place in the Bocca Tigres, the narrowest point of the Pearl River Delta, which links Hong Kong with Canton (modern-day Guangzhou). The two islands either side of this point were heavily fortified, but the defenders proved no match for the British amphibious assault, which included 600 Sepoys landed by the Nemesis. It was during this action that the warship engaged around fifteen junks sheltering in Anson’s Bay close to the eastern shore. The outcome was hardly surprising; Nemesis was twice the size of a junk and the Chinese had no weapons that could even penetrate her iron hull.
Duncan’s painting seems to downplay the involvement of other British warships, focusing on the most spectacular moment of the battle when the ‘hit and hope’ firing of a Congreve rocket, which was launched rather like an old-fashioned firework, made a fortuitous strike on a highly combustible part of a large junk. This event was illustrated by several other artists of the period. The painter’s volcanic depiction of the junk’s destruction seems to have originated in a written description made by Hall himself, who wrote that the junk ‘blew up with a terrific explosion, launching into eternity every soul on board, and pouring forth its blaze like the mighty rush of fire from a volcano’.
Aside from her conspicuous design and showy weaponry, Nemesis proved her value in more mundane ways, ferrying troops and towing the less manoeuvrable wooden warships to within firing range of Chinese defences; normally this would be a laborious task for sailors in rowboats of the type shown in the picture. The ship was also prominent in the later Battle of Whampoa, which led to the recapture of Canton.[3] However, it is now disputed whether the Nemesis had any significant military impact over that of her wooden-hulled counterparts; She was after all only one of more than 40 ships that took part in the conflict, many of which were much more heavily armed.[4] In fact, in the one book I have read about the Opium Wars; by W. Travis Hanes and Frank Sanello; the Nemesis gets barely a mention. The ship’s greater fame seems to rest partly on the explosive art of Duncan and his contemporaries.
[1] The full title is: The iron steam ship ‘Nemesis’, commanded by Lieutenant W. H. Hall, with boats from the ‘Sulphur’, ‘Calliope’, ‘Larne’ and ‘Starling’, destroying the Chinese War Junks in Anson’s Bay, on 7 January 1841.
[2] The Royal Navy continued building wooden warships until the mid-1860s.
[3] Whampoa was a fortified island downstream from the city.
[4] This included a second iron warship, the Phlegethon.
Bow Creek to Anatahan 