It's the morning of January 7, 1841, on board the British ship Nemesis in the Pearl River Delta of southern China.

43-year-old William Hall, commander of the Nemesis, raises his telescope and fixes it on the Chinese fleet upriver.

Smoke drifts across the water between their black wooden halls.

Just this morning, Hall's ships pounded a nearby coastal fort into submission,

and now he's turning his attention to the Chinese Navy.

Decades of tension between Britain and China's Qing Empire have reached a boiling point.

China has recently cracked down on opium abuse and tried to ban foreign merchants from importing

the drug into the country.

But the trade is a lucrative one, especially for the British, so London has sent a fleet

to force China to change its mind.

And the nemesis is a state-of-the-art warship.

Steam-powered and iron-hulled, it's been specifically designed to slit through shallow waters

and take the battle to the enemy where they least expected.

On the quarter-deck, still eyeing the Chinese ships,

Commander Hall calmly gives the order to attack,

and his crew springs into action.

British guns soon ring out across the Delta.

Hall watches through his telescope as 32-pound cannonballs sliced through the Chinese ships,

pulverizing heavy timber into a rain of splinters.

But Hall has an even more powerful weapon at his disposal, the Congreve rocket.

Although difficult to use, if it hits its mark, the results can be devastating.

Hall nods at its engineers.

...