Combat· China Operations
Battle of the Barrier Forts
The largest Marine combat action between the Mexican War and the Civil War.
After Chinese guns on the Pearl River fired on the USS Portsmouth, an American squadron moved to punish the affront by storming the Barrier Forts, four powerful river fortifications below Canton mounting some 176 guns and held by several thousand Chinese troops. Over three days in late November 1856 a landing force of about 287 officers, seamen, and Marines from the Portsmouth, Levant, and San Jacinto carried the forts one after another by assault, against repeated counterattacks, the Marines forming part of the storming columns. The combined American loss across the operation was about ten killed and twenty-two wounded; the references do not break out a separate Marine figure, the casualties falling on the mixed force. The action was a striking demonstration of American naval gun-and-musket warfare against fixed fortifications.
Record no. 379