The sustained American naval and Marine effort to protect American lives and commerce in the Chinese ports through a decade of upheaval, spanning the Taiping Rebellion and the Second Opium War.
Under the treaty system that had opened the ports, American warships kept a presence on the coast and put landing parties ashore whenever the turmoil threatened foreign residents. The operations gathered a series of distinct actions: the suppression of a mutiny aboard a vessel in the Canton River in 1853; the defense of the Shanghai settlement at Muddy Flat in 1854; the destruction of a pirate fleet at Ty-ho Bay in 1855; and the climactic storming of the Barrier Forts on the Pearl River below Canton in 1856, the largest Marine combat action of the years between the Mexican War and the Civil War. Marines furnished the guards and landing forces throughout, repeatedly going ashore to hold the line in a country in chaos.
Engagements in this conflict (6)
Record no. 361