Nemesis was the first British ocean-going iron warship. She was the largest of a class of six similar vessels ordered by the 'Secret Committee' of the East India Company. Nemesis, together with her sister shipsPhlegethon, Pluto, Proserpine, Ariadne, and Medusa, was built by John Laird’s yard at Birkenhead. Launched in 1839, the Nemesis was deployed to China – arriving late-1839 – and used to great effect in the First Opium War and Captain William Hutcheon Hall and later in 1842 by Captain Richard Collinson. The Chinese referred to her as the "devil ship".
"...this vessel is provided with an Admiralty letter of license or letter of marque. If so, it can only be against the Chinese; and for the purpose of smuggling opium she is admirably adapted."
Nemesis was a gunboat built by British shipbuilding company John Laird's Birkenhead Iron Works in three months. She had a length of, a beam of, a draught of when full of coal and less than 5 ft when laden with less, and a burthen of 660 tons. She was powered by two sixty horsepower Forrester engines. She was armed with two pivot-mounted 32-pounder and four 6-pounder guns. The steam- and sail-powered ship was particularly effective in China because her shallow draught of only five feet allowed her to travel up rivers to pursue and engage other vessels and targets. Her watertight bulkheads were the first to be used in a warship. They enabled her to survive the hull damage she sustained during sea trials and en route to China in 1840. That year, Nemesis became the first iron ship to sail around the Cape of Good Hope, aided by techniques developed the year before by Sir George Airy, the Astronomer Royal, to adjust a compass for the effect of an iron hull. The adjustments were not particularly effective, with the result that the ship's compass performed poorly throughout its career.
China
Nemesis arrived off the coast of China in late 1840, although when she set sail from Liverpool it was publicly intimated that she was bound for Odessa to keep the voyage a secret. A British officer wrote that the outbreak of the First Opium War "was considered an extremely favourable opportunity for testing the advantages or otherwise of iron steam-vessels." She first saw action in the Second Battle of Chuenpi on 7January 1841 against the Chinese fleet at the Bocca Tigris forts. In the Battle of First Bar, Nemesis sank Cambridge, an old, but re-armed East Indiaman that the Chinese had purchased. Due to Nemesiss shallow draught, Nemesis was able to move through shallow water during the Broadway expedition on 13–15 March and aided in the capture of Canton on 18 March. Based in Chusan, she also saw action at Taisam in February 1842, in a successful skirmish associated with repulse of a much larger Chinese attack on Ningbo.
Later career
After the First Opium War, Nemesis was tasked with the suppression of pirates in Indonesia and the Philippines. She then operated from Bombay, chiefly to Karachi. In May 1846 she attacked a flotilla of Sooloo pirate prows in the Bruni river, Borneo. Around the end of 1846 as a result of mob rioting in Canton which had started in July, she was posted by Sir John Davis to cover the East India Company'sfactory there. She was then withdrawn before February 1847, despite protests from traders. In early 1853, she helped the company's steamer Zenobia expel Burmese troops from Bassein province. She sailed from Shanghai on 1 February 1854, bound for Belfast. Laird Brothers displayed a model of the H.E.I.C. "Nemesis" at the 1893 Chicago Exhibition.
In fiction
's novel Tai-Pan refers to a groundbreaking iron ship called Nemesis taking part in the First Opium War. However, the fictionalized vessel is a Royal Navy ship that arrived to assist in the shallow Chinese rivers that would be traversed to gain access to inland China. Flood of Fire, by Amitav Ghosh, contains a brief account of Nemesis in her role during the early battles of the First Opium War. In the book Storm and Silence by Robert Thier, it is mentioned as belonging to the East India Company's owner, a fictional character Lord Dalgliesh, the antagonist of the five-novel series, made popular through Wattpad.
