Descent of The Min River
On 25 August, after receiving the congratulations of the captains of the neutral warships on the professionalism displayed by the French squadron during the action of 23 August, Courbet began to lead his ships back down the Min River. The squadron's two heaviest ships, Triomphante and Duguay-Trouin, led the way.
On 25 and 26 August the French bombarded the Tianluowan (田螺灣) and Min'an (閩安) batteries, two Chinese shore batteries covering the approach to Fuzhou through the narrow Min'an Pass. The Chinese batteries, built to fire only on enemy ships approaching from the mouth of the river, were taken in reverse and destroyed by Duguay-Trouin and Triomphante.
On 27 and 28 August the French squadron bombarded and destroyed the Chinese defences at the Jinpai pass near the entrance to the Min River. The Jinpai (金牌) and Changmen (長門) batteries, known to the French as Fort Kimpai and the White Fort (Fort Blanc), were put out of action, and the French also inflicted heavy casualties on a number of Chinese field batteries and infantry formations. However, before its guns were destroyed the White Fort was able to inflict moderate damage on the French ironclad La Galissonnière, which had sailed up from Jilong to join Courbet's squadron and attempted unsuccessfully to fight its way into the Min River. Chinese infantry at the Jinpai pass also killed and wounded several French sailors aboard the gunboat Vipère on 27 August.
Read more about this topic: Battle Of Fuzhou
Famous quotes containing the words descent and/or river:
““There is Hawthorne, with genius so shrinking and rare
That you hardly at first see the strength that is there;
A frame so robust, with a nature so sweet,
So earnest, so graceful, so lithe and so fleet,
Is worth a descent from Olympus to meet;”
—James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)
“Every incident connected with the breaking up of the rivers and ponds and the settling of the weather is particularly interesting to us who live in a climate of so great extremes. When the warmer days come, they who dwell near the river hear the ice crack at night with a startling whoop as loud as artillery, as if its icy fetters were rent from end to end, and within a few days see it rapidly going out. So the alligator comes out of the mud with quakings of the earth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)