Security· China Operations
Mutiny suppression at Blenheim Reach
A small policing action on a Chinese river, of the kind that fell to the Marine guards of ships on a distant station.
In September 1853, on the Canton River some sixty miles above Hong Kong, a mutiny broke out aboard a foreign-flagged merchant vessel, and an officer from the squadron, with a detachment of about ten Marines drawn from one of the American warships, boarded the ship at Blenheim Reach and put the mutiny down. The Marines restored order and re-embarked. No fighting of consequence and no casualties resulted. The episode was typical of the period, when an American squadron in Asian waters was expected to act as a floating arm of law and order, and the ship's Marine guard was the natural instrument for boarding a vessel in trouble and quelling disorder among its crew, even one not flying the American flag.
Record no. 377