Battle of Fuzhou - The Battle of Fuzhou

The Battle of Fuzhou

On the morning of Saturday 23 August, although the Chinese commanders knew that the French would launch their attack at around 2 p.m., the sailors in both fleets went about their routine business. The ships of the Fujian Fleet made no attempt to redeploy or to anticipate the French attack by opening fire first. The French crews went to their action stations at 1.30 p.m., after eating their midday meal. The Chinese did not react to this obvious threat, and at 1.45 p.m. the flurry of activity aboard the French ships died down. For the next ten minutes the tension grew aboard the French ships as the minutes ticked away towards 2 p.m. At 1.55 p.m. a Chinese mineboat advanced towards the French squadron. Courbet immediately ordered the attack to begin, only five minutes short of his original timetable.

At the outset of the battle the Chinese flagship Yangwu was successfully attacked with a spar torpedo by Torpedo Boat No. 46 (lieutenant de vaisseau Douzans) and grounded. The French torpedo boat suffered damage to her boiler during this attack. The despatch vessel Fuxing was attacked less successfully by Torpedo Boat No. 45 (lieutenant de vaisseau Latour), and was subsequently crippled by Volta's torpedo launch and carried by boarding by Boué de Lapeyrère's sailors. She had already been set alight by French shellfire, and was eventually abandoned by the French prize crew and sank in the middle of the Min River.

Their spar torpedoes expended, the two French torpedo boats drifted downriver after making their attack, towards the anchorage of the neutral vessels off Losing Island. Lieutenant Latour had been seriously wounded in the eye during the attack, but he refused an offer of medical assistance from American officers on USS Enterprise, explaining that he could not leave his post while the battle was still in progress.

Meanwhile the French cruisers and the ironclad Triomphante, which joined the French squadron only minutes before the battle began, were making short work of the rest of the Chinese fleet. Chenhang, Yongbao, Feiyun, Ji'an, Fusheng and Jiansheng were either sunk or set alight by shellfire from the cruisers Duguay-Trouin, Villars and d’Estaing. Only Fupo and Yixin survived the battle without serious damage, by escaping upriver before the gunboats Lynx, Aspic and Vipère had a chance to engage them. Zhenwei was blown up by a single shell from Triomphante.

Before they were put out of action the outgunned Chinese vessels concentrated their fire on the French flagship Volta, hoping to kill Courbet and the officers of his entourage. Several sailors aboard the French cruiser were killed or wounded, and shortly after the start of the battle a roundshot ploughed through Courbet's command group on the flagship's bridge, killing the British pilot Thomas and only narrowly missing capitaine de frégate Gigon, Volta's captain. A few minutes later splinters from an exploding Chinese shell wounded lieutenant de vaisseau Ravel, Courbet's aide de camp.

The fighting ended at 5 p.m., but during the night of 23 August the Chinese made a number of unsuccessful attacks with fireships on the French warships, obliging some of them to shift their anchorages to evade them.