Combat· China Operations
USS Portsmouth Marines ashore at Canton (Second Opium War)
The protective deployment that led directly to the Barrier Forts fight.
As the Second Opium War opened and fighting flared around Canton, Marines and sailors from the sloop USS Portsmouth were landed in the autumn of 1856 to guard American lives and property in the foreign factories there. The duty turned dangerous in November, when the Chinese fortifications on the Pearl River, the Barrier Forts, opened fire on the Portsmouth as she moved up the river, and one Marine was wounded by the firing. The Americans treated the unprovoked attack on their flag as an insult demanding redress, and within days it brought on the storming of the Barrier Forts. The Canton landing was in itself a routine protective measure, but the firing on the Portsmouth, and the wounding of the Marine, was the spark that touched off the largest Marine action of the era.
Record no. 378