Page 290 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

276.

neither side was satisfied with the agreement and, within a

month, hostilities resumed. On February 20 the British bom­

barded the Chinese forts inside the Bogue, a clash that

resulted in hundreds of Chinese dead or captured but in no

English losses. A week later the English destroyed a flotilla

of Chinese war junks, which included a Western-style ship.

In June 1840 the last American vessel to run through

the Bogue before the English blockade had been the ship

"Chesapeake." Warren Delano, who had just merged Russell,

Sturgis & Co. into Russell & Co., purchased the English ship

"Cambridge" to transport cargo between Whampoa and Hong Kong.
Delano changed the ship's name to "Chesapeake." Having gotten

inside the Bogue just before the blockade became effective,

the "Chesapeake" was stranded. The Chinese had decided they

could use a foreign ship "as an additional protection against

the barbarian war ships." Russell & Co. gladly sold the ship

for the amount of its Cumsha and Measurement fees. Its bow

painted with eyes and its rigging adorned with streamers and

flags, the ship was armed with cannon "of every available size,"

stones, bows and arrows, and varieties of muskets. The Chin­

ese employed the "Chesapeake" in the action at the Bogue. On

February 17 the H.M.S. "Nemesis" landed a round that killed
96
every man aboard and sank China's first modern naval vessel.

Victorious at the Bogue, the British fleet moved up to

Whampoa. Capt. Elliot opened the trade at Canton to foreign

96
Hunter, 'Fan Kwae' at Canton, pp. 147-49.