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Updated: June 10, 2025
We have seen that ever since the Ichi-no-tani fight, the Minamoto generals, especially Kajiwara Kagetoki, had been actively engaged in building, or otherwise acquiring, war-junks. By April, 1185, they had brought together a squadron of seven to eight hundred; whereas, in the sequel of Yashima and minor engagements, the Taira fleet had been reduced to some five hundred.
On her way the Blonde came off Amoa, near which she observed batteries thrown up, and in a short time a number of large armed junks came down as if to attack her. On a boat being sent on shore with a flag of truce, she was fired on by the Chinese. On this the Blonde opened her broadsides, soon knocked the forts to pieces, and compelled the war-junks to run up the harbour.
Further negotiations as to the renewal of trade having fallen through, Lin gave orders for all British ships to leave China within three days, which resulted in a fight between two men-of-war and twenty-nine war-junks, in which the latter were either sunk or driven off with great loss.
The fleet also destroyed a large number of Chinese war-junks in the Canton waters; but further operations on land were suspended till the Indian Mutiny had been quelled, and Lord Elgin had returned to China. The British and French troops having united towards the end of December 1857, the city of Canton was summoned to surrender.
There they were attacked at dawn on the 24th by Yoshitsune, to whom there had arrived on the previous evening a re-enforcement of thirty war-junks, sent, not by Kagetoki, but by a Minamoto supporter who had been driven from the province of Iyo some time previously by the Taira. As usual, the impetuosity of Yoshitsune's onset carried everything before it.
Before this the Volage and Hyacinth, while lying in Canton River, had a sharp engagement with a fleet of war-junks, under the Chinese Admiral Kwang. Gallantly as Kwang behaved, in a short time one of his junks blew up, three sank, several were shattered and deserted by their crews, and the remainder fled in the greatest confusion, Kwang's junk being in a sinking condition.
It was his faithful "Mike," who had escaped the shower of shot and shell and the hungry Chinese, and now recognised the boat of his master. Of the fleet of war-junks captured, only five were saved from destruction; and for some time during the night they were burning away, sending their shot right and left, and occasionally one of them would explode.
The question was soon answered, for looming through the darkness appeared a long line of large war-junks, behind which the boat of which they were in pursuit rapidly glided. They must have been seen from the junks, for directly afterwards they were saluted by a thick shower of jingall bullets, while several round shot came whizzing past them.
A few miles down stream we overtake a fleet of some twenty war-junks, presenting a most novel and interesting sight, crowded as each one is with the gayest of flags and streaming pennants galore.
It was ascertained that large numbers of Chinese war-junks were collected, keeping out of the way, as they fancied, of the outer barbarians, in the various creeks and channels which run into the Canton river. These channels were narrow and shallow in some places, and guarded with forts and booms, and natural as well as artificial bars.
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