 the finances of the Qing Empire, with the ultimate goal of acquiring a colonial possession on the Chinese coast. This was accomplished through the capture of Chinese cities and by blockading major river systems. Once a fort or city had been captured, the British would destroy the local arsenal and disable all of the captured guns. They would then move on to the next target, leaving a small garrison behind. This strategy was planned and implemented by Major General Gough, who was able to operate with minimal input from the British government after Superintendent Elliot was recalled in 1841. The large number of private British merchants and East India Company ships deployed in Singapore and the India colonies ensured that the British forces in China were adequately supplied.
China did not have a unified navy. Although the Qing had invested in naval defences for their adjacent seas in earlier periods, after the death of the Qianlong Emperor in 1799, the navy decayed as more attention was directed to suppressing the Miao Rebellion and White Lotus Rebellion, which left the Qing treasury bankrupt. The remaining naval forces were badly overstretched, undermanned, underfunded and uncoordinated.
From the onset of the war the Chinese navy was severely disadvantaged. Chinese war junks were intended for use against pirates or equivalent types of vessels, and were most effective in close range river engagements. Due to their ships' slow speeds, Qing captains consistently found themselves sailing towards much more maneuverable British ships, and as a consequence the Chinese could only use their bow guns. The size of the British ships made traditional boarding tactics useless, and the junks carried smaller numbers of inferior weaponry. In addition, the Chinese ships were poorly armored; in several battles, British shells and rockets penetrated Chinese magazines and detonated gunpowder stores. Highly maneuverable steamships such HMS Nemesis could decimate small fleets of junks, as the junks had little chance of catching up to and engaging the faster British steamers. The only western-style warship in the Qing Navy, the converted East Indiaman Cambridge, was destroyed in the Battle of First Bar.
The defensive nature of the conflict resulted in the Chinese relying heavily an extensive network of fortifications. The Kangxi Emperor (1654–1722) began the construction of river defenses to combat pirates, and encouraged the use of western style cannons. By the time of the First Opium War, multiple forts defended most major Chinese cities and waterways. Although the forts were well armed and strategically positioned, the Qing defeat exposed major flaws in their design. The cannons used in the Qing defensive fortifications were a collection of Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, and British pieces. The domestically produced Chinese cannon were crafted using sub-par forging methods, limiting their effectiveness in combat and causing excessive gun barrel wear. The Chinese blend of gunpowder contained more charcoal than the British mixture did. While this made the explosive more stable and thus easier to store, it also limited its potential as a propellant, decreasing projectile range and accuracy. Overall, Chinese cannon technology was considered to be 200 years behind that of the British. Chinese forts were unable to withstand attacks by European weaponry, as they were designed without angled glacis and many did not have protected magazines. The limited range of the Qing cannon allowed the British to bombard the Qing defenses from a safe distance, then land soldiers to storm them with minimal risk. Many of the larger Chinese guns were built as fixed emplacements and were unable to be maneuvered to fire at British ships. The failure of the Qing fortifications coupled with the Chinese underestimation of the Royal Navy allowed the British to force their way up major rivers and impede Qing logistics. Most notably, the powerful series of forts at Humen were well positioned to stop an invader from proceeding upriver to Canton, but it was not considered that