Destroying Chinese War Junks 1843 Desk Mat

Destroying Chinese War Junks by E Duncan 1843 Birkenhead shipbuilding family who built the 'Nemesis' and other vessels. On 7 January 1841, the 'Nemesis' of the Bombay Marine (East India naval service), commanded by William Hutcheon Hall, with boats from the ‘Sulphur’, ‘Calliope’, ‘Larne’ and ‘Starling’, destroyed Chinese war junks in Anson's Bay, Chuenpee, near the Bocca Tigris forts guarding the mouth of the Pearl River up to Canton. British forces then captured the forts themselves. Hall was a Royal Naval master at the time. He had steam experience and had been privately engaged by John Laird to command the 'Nemesis', which the latter had built experimentally as the first fully iron warship, and was so successful in it in China that in 1841 he was specially commissioned as a Naval lieutenant. He went on to later Royal Naval service as a captain in the Crimean War and a retired admiral at his death in 1875.