Tonkin Flotilla

The Tonkin Flotilla (French: flottille de Tonkin), a force of despatch vessels and gunboats used for policing the rivers and waterways of the Tonkin Delta, was created in the summer of 1883, during the period of undeclared hostilities that preceded the Sino-French War (August 1884–April 1885).

In March 1882, on the eve of Commandant Henri Rivière's seizure of the citadel of Hanoi, France had two naval divisions in the Far East. The seas to the east of the Hainan Strait were the responsibility of Rear Admiral Charles Meyer’s Far East naval division (division navale de l’Extrême-Orient). France’s interests in Indochina were protected by Rivière’s Cochinchina naval division (division navale de Cochinchine), responsible for monitoring coastal navigation between Singapore and the Hainan Strait and along the rivers of Cochinchina and Cambodia.

Several vessels under Rivière's command were normally stationed in Cochinchina or Cambodia, including the troopship Drac, the light frigate Alouette and the small gunboats Framée and Javeline. Tilsitt, the flagship of the Cochinchina naval division, was disarmed and in permanent dock at Saigon, and served as the division’s storehouse and administrative centre. Most of the division's vessels, however, were stationed in Tonkin, where they were enforcing the right of free navigation on the Red River conceded to France by the Vietnamese government in 1874. Rivière's command in Tonkin consisted of the light frigates Hamelin, Parseval and Antilope (the latter due to be replaced shortly by Pluvier), the heavy gunboats Lynx and Vipère, the seagoing gunboats Fanfare, Léopard and Surprise, and the smaller river gunboats Carabine, Éclair, Hache, Massue, Trombe and Yatagan. The heavy gunboats had crews of 77 men and mounted four cannon, while the smaller gunboats had two cannon each. They all carried a Hotchkiss canon-revolver in their tops.

Following Rivière's defeat and death at the Battle of Paper Bridge (19 June 1883), the navy ministry created a new Tonkin Coasts naval division (division navale des côtes du Tonkin) under the command of Admiral Amédée Courbet, whose mission was to cut off the flow of weapons and ammunition from China to the Black Flag Army by blockading the Gulf of Tonkin. The larger seagoing vessels already on station in Tonkin were transferred to Courbet's new naval division, while the remainder (mostly gunboats) were organised into the 'Tonkin Flotilla'. The flotilla was initially placed under the command of général de brigade Alexandre-Eugène Bouët (1833–87), the French commandant supérieur in Tonkin. Operational command was given to capitaine de vaisseau Morel-Beaulieu.

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