''Nemesis'' was the first British ocean-going iron warship. She was the largest of a class of six similar vessels ordered by the 'Secret Committee' of the East India Company. ''Nemesis,'' together with her sister ships ''Phlegethon, Pluto, Proserpine, Ariadne,'' and ''Medusa,'' was built by John Laird's yard at

Birkenhead Birkenhead () is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral, Merseyside, England. The town is on the Wirral Peninsula, along the west bank of the River Mersey, opposite Liverpool. It lies within the Historic counties of England, historic co ...

and

William Fairbairn & Sons William Fairbairn and Sons, was an engineering works in Manchester, England. History William Fairbairn opened an iron foundry in 1816 and was joined the following year by a Mr. Lillie, and the firm became known as Fairbairn and Lillie Engine M ...

Millwall Millwall is a district on the western and southern side of the Isle of Dogs, in east London, England, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It lies to the immediate south of Canary Wharf and Poplar, north of Greenwich and Deptford, east of ...

. Launched in 1839, the Nemesis was deployed to China – arriving late 1840 – and used to great effect in the

First Opium War The First Opium War ( zh, t=第一次鴉片戰爭, p=Dìyīcì yāpiàn zhànzhēng), also known as the Anglo-Chinese War, was a series of military engagements fought between the British Empire and the Chinese Qing dynasty between 1839 and 1 ...

by Captain William Hutcheon Hall and later in 1842 by Captain

Richard Collinson Admiral (Royal Navy), Admiral Sir Richard Collinson (7 November 1811 – 13 September 1883) was an English naval officer and explorer of the Northwest Passage. Early life He was born in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, England, then part of County D ...

. The Chinese referred to her as the "devil ship".

Construction

Although commissioned by the Secret Committee of the

East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company that was founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to Indian Ocean trade, trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (South A ...

(EIC) in 1839, the vessel did not appear in the EIC's list of ships, leading ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...

'' to comment:

''"...this vessel is provided with an Admiralty letter of licence or
letter of marque A letter of marque and reprisal () was a Sovereign state, government license in the Age of Sail that authorized a private person, known as a privateer or French corsairs, corsair, to attack and capture vessels of a foreign state at war with t ...
. If so, it can only be against the Chinese; and for the purpose of smuggling opium she is admirably adapted."''

''Nemesis'' was a gunboat built by British shipbuilding company John Laird's Birkenhead Iron Works in three months. She had a length of , a beam of , a draught of when full of coal and less than 5 ft when laden with less, and a burthen of 660 tons. She was powered by two sixty horsepower Forrester engines. She was armed with two pivot-mounted 32-pounder and four 6-pounder guns. The steam- and sail-powered ship was particularly effective in China because her shallow draught of only five feet allowed her to travel up rivers to pursue and engage other vessels and targets. Her watertight bulkheads were the first to be used in a warship. They enabled her to survive the hull damage she sustained during sea trials and en route to China in 1840. In July 1840, ''Nemesis'' became the first iron ship to sail around the

Cape of Good Hope The Cape of Good Hope ( ) is a rocky headland on the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula in South Africa. A List of common misconceptions#Geography, common misconception is that the Cape of Good Hope is the southern tip of Afri ...

, aided by techniques developed the year before by Sir

George Airy Sir George Biddell Airy (; 27 July 18012 January 1892) was an English mathematician and astronomer, as well as the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics from 1826 to 1828 and the seventh Astronomer Royal from 1835 to 1881. His many achievements inc ...

, the

Astronomer Royal Astronomer Royal is a senior post in the Royal Households of the United Kingdom. There are two officers, the senior being the astronomer royal dating from 22 June 1675; the junior is the astronomer royal for Scotland dating from 1834. The Astro ...

, to adjust a compass for the effect of an iron hull. The adjustments were not particularly effective, with the result that the ship's compass performed poorly throughout its career.

China

''Nemesis'' arrived off the coast of China in late 1840, although when she set sail from

Liverpool Liverpool is a port City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. It is situated on the eastern side of the River Mersey, Mersey Estuary, near the Irish Sea, north-west of London. With a population ...

it was publicly intimated that she was bound for

Odessa ODESSA is an American codename (from the German language, German: ''Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen'', meaning: Organization of Former SS Members) coined in 1946 to cover Ratlines (World War II aftermath), Nazi underground escape-pl ...

to keep the voyage a secret. A British officer wrote that the outbreak of the

"was considered an extremely favourable opportunity for testing the advantages or otherwise of iron steam-vessels." She first saw action in the Second Battle of Chuenpi on 7January 1841 against the Chinese fleet at the

Bocca Tigris The Humen, also known as the Bocca Tigris or the Bogue, is a narrow strait in the Pearl River Delta The Pearl River Delta Metropolitan Region is the low-lying area surrounding the Pearl River estuary, where the Pearl River flows into the S ...

forts. In the

Battle of First Bar The Battle of First Bar was fought between British and Chinese forces at First Bar Island and its surrounding area in the Pearl River, Guangdong province, China, on 27 February 1841 during the First Opium War. Background On 21 February 1841 ...

(27 February), ''Nemesis'' sank ''

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

'', an old, but re-armed

East Indiaman East Indiamen were merchant ships that operated under charter or licence for European trading companies which traded with the East Indies between the 17th and 19th centuries. The term was commonly used to refer to vessels belonging to the Bri ...

that the Chinese had purchased. Due to ''Nemesis''s shallow draught, ''Nemesis'' was able to move through shallow water during the

Broadway expedition The Broadway expedition was a British military expedition that explored the Broadway River (present-day Xi River) in Guangdong province, China, on 13–15 March 1841 during the First Opium War. The river was also called the ''Inner Passage'' o ...

on 13–15 March and aided in the capture of Canton on 18 March. Based in Chusan, she also saw action at Taisam in February 1842, in a successful skirmish associated with repulse of a much larger Chinese attack on

Ningbo Ningbo is a sub-provincial city in northeastern Zhejiang province, People's Republic of China. It comprises six urban districts, two satellite county-level cities, and two rural counties, including several islands in Hangzhou Bay and the Eas ...

Later career

After the First Opium War, ''Nemesis'' was tasked with the suppression of pirates near

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...

and the

Philippines The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Located in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of List of islands of the Philippines, 7,641 islands, with a tot ...

. She then operated from Bombay, chiefly to Karachi. Around the end of 1846 as a result of mob rioting in Canton which had started in July, she was posted by Sir John Davis to cover the

factory A factory, manufacturing plant or production plant is an industrial facility, often a complex consisting of several buildings filled with machinery, where workers manufacture items or operate machines which process each item into another. Th ...

there. She was then withdrawn before February 1847, despite protests from traders. In May 1847 she attacked a flotilla of Sooloo pirate prows in the

Brunei river The Brunei River () is a river which flows through Brunei and empties into the Brunei Bay towards the north-east direction. The Istana Nurul Iman, the official residence of the Sultan of Brunei, stands on its banks. The Brunei River is the s ...

Borneo Borneo () is the List of islands by area, third-largest island in the world, with an area of , and population of 23,053,723 (2020 national censuses). Situated at the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia, it is one of the Greater Sunda ...

. In early 1853, she helped the company's steamer ''Zenobia'' expel Burmese troops from Bassein province. She sailed from Shanghai on 1 February 1854, bound for Belfast. Laird Brothers displayed a model of the H.E.I.C. "Nemesis" (1839) at the 1893 Chicago Exhibition.

References

Notes

External links

{{Commons category, Nemesis (ship, 1839), Nemesis
The ''Nemesis'' – Great Britain's Secret Weapon in the Opium Wars, 1839–60
*
Narrative of the Voyages and Services of the Nemesis from 1840 to 1843
' by W. D. Bernard at

Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg (PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital li ...

1839 ships First Opium War ships of the United Kingdom Ships built on the River Mersey Ships of the British East India Company