Combat· China Operations
Battle of Ty-ho Bay
A hard-fought anti-piracy action and one of the first joint operations between American and British forces in Asia.
Chinese pirates operating out of Kuhlan had seized merchant vessels off the South China coast, and a combined force set out to destroy them in Ty-ho Bay, near Hong Kong. Sailors and Marines from the American steam frigate USS Powhatan, working alongside the Royal Navy's boats from HMS Rattler and the steamer Eaglet, closed with a fleet of more than thirty war junks under heavy but inaccurate fire, then grappled and boarded amid fierce close fighting. The pirate fleet was shattered, with hundreds of pirates killed and about a thousand taken. The cost to the Americans was real: by the accounts, five killed and six wounded out of the roughly hundred men engaged, the named dead being members of the Powhatan's crew. Ty-ho Bay was among the last great battles between Western navies and the Chinese pirate fleets.
Record no. 69