ite_, wrecked on the coast, and Mrs Noble, the captain's wife, were
also captured. Near Macao a Mr Staunton had been been carried away, on
which Captain Smith, then the senior officer on the station, sent to
demand his release. It being refused, and the Chinese being observed
strengthening the barrier which runs across the isthmus, joining Macao
to the mainland, he considered it probable that the enemy would attack
the city. Taking, therefore, the _Larne_ and _Hyacinth_, with the
_Enterprise_ steamer and _Louisa_ cutter, he ran up close to the barrier
and opened so warm a cannonade on the Chinese works and barracks, that
the enemy's fire was silenced in about an hour. Some blue-jacket
small-arm men and soldiers being then disembarked, they drove the
Chinese from every one of their positions, spiked the guns, and burnt
the barracks and other buildings. This was the last hostile proceeding
of the British in the year 1840. The Chinese, wishing to gain time,
induced Admiral Elliott to agree to a truce, shortly after which he
resigned command from ill-health, and returned to England, leaving Sir
Gordon Bremer as commander-in-chief. At the commencement of 1841 the
squadron was further increased by the arrival of the _Nemesis_ steamer,
commanded by Mr W.H. Hall, then a master in the navy, and the
_Sulphur_, Commander Belcher. The _Nemesis_, though not commissioned
under the articles of war, most of her officers were in the Royal Navy;
but she belonged to the East India Company. She was built by Mr Laird
at Birkenhead, and although of about 630 tons burden, with engines of
120 horse-power, with all her armament complete, she drew only 6 feet of
water. Her extreme length was 184 feet, her breadth 29 feet, and her
depth 11 feet. She had no fixed keel, and was almost perfectly
flat-bottomed. She had, however, two sliding or movable keels, made of
wood, each about 7 feet in length, one being placed before and the other
abaft the engine-room, and, being enclosed in narrow cases reaching to
the deck, they could be raised or lowered at will by means of a winch.
With the exception of the great paddle-beams across the ship, the planks
of the deck, and the cabin fittings, with a few other portions, she was
built entirely of iron. As, from her form, she could not have been
steered by an ordinary rudder, a movable rudder was attached to the
lower part of the true or fixed rudder, descending to the same depth as
the two false kee