Qualla: Battle of First Bar

Battle of First Bar: Introduction

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unclear, Public domain. On the morning of 27 February 1841, the shore of the Pearl River was lined with thousands of onlookers watching British warships sail past. Lieutenant John Elliot Bingham, aboard HMS Modeste, wrote that many of them were "secretly wishing them success" — though whose success he meant is impossible to know. What is certain is that by afternoon, hundreds of men were dead, a camp was burning, and the river that connects Guangzhou to the sea had become a battlefield. The Battle of First Bar was a single episode in the First Opium War, a conflict driven by Britain's insistence on trading opium into China against the Chinese government's determined efforts to stop it. The consequences of that day reached far beyond the smoke rising from the paddy fields.

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Image: Unclear | Public domain

Battle of First Bar: The War Behind the Battle

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit From the Admiralty Chart, Public domain. The First Opium War did not begin as a war over territory or religion. It began over trade — and over a drug. British merchants had found in opium a commodity that could reverse their trade deficit with China, flooding Chinese markets with the drug despite imperial edicts banning...

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Image: From the Admiralty Chart | Public domain

Battle of First Bar: The Morning of 27 February

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unclear, Public domain. Seven ships sailed from the direction of the Bocca Tigris that morning: HMS Calliope, Herald, Alligator, Sulphur, and Modeste, along with the steamers Madagascar and Nemesis. Commodore Gordon Bremer placed Captain Thomas Herbert of Calliope in overall command. By noon, the fleet ...

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Image: Unclear | Public domain

Battle of First Bar: An Hour of Fire

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unclear, Public domain. When the British steamers advanced, the Chinese batteries opened fire. The British returned fire with shells and rockets. HMS Modeste pushed to within 300 yards of the shore and fired broadsides; the other ships joined the cannonade. The rockets and explosive shells from Madagasc...

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Image: Unclear | Public domain

Battle of First Bar: What the River Remembered

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unclear, Public domain. In the aftermath, the diplomats resumed their meetings — Qishan, Deng Tingzhen, and Yiliang gathered that same afternoon, according to Lin Zexu's account. The military academy that would later be founded nearby on Changzhou Island was still decades away. The Opium War would conti...

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Image: Unclear | Public domain