Built from Commander W. H. Hall’s notes, this narrative follows the Nemesis, an iron armed steamer that sailed round the Cape to China in 1840. Her story widens into a history of the First Opium War, its causes, its combined naval and military operations along the Chinese coast and rivers, and the founding of the colony of Hong Kong, with remarks on Chinese life.
A contemporary British account of a war fought for the opium trade, valuable both as history and as a record of imperial attitudes. Download the free EPUB.