Battle of First Bar

27 February 1841, The First Bar, Pearl River below Whampoa

British victory

The day after the Bogue fell, Captain Thomas Herbert of Calliope led the light ships and steamers on up the river. At the First Bar the Chinese had built a battery and a barrier of sunken junks and rafts, with the armed former merchant ship Cambridge moored behind it. The British silenced the battery and stormed the position, and a boarding party from Nemesis set Cambridge on fire. She blew up that afternoon. The way to Whampoa and Canton was open.