Our news is that fighting commenced at the Pagoda Anchorage at a quarter past two oclock on Saturday. The first shot was fired by Admiral Courbets flagship, the Bayard,（? Volta）which is an ironclad with fourteen
guns, and it was immediately returned by the Chinese admirals flagship, the wooden corvette yang-woo, the two flagships lying broadside to broadside, and less than 200 yards apart.
…last Monday the French fleet consisted of seven vessels only … the Chinese fleet, eleven gun vessels in all, and from forty to fifty war junks, was about equally divided and a subdivision stationed at either end of the simi-circle formed by the French vessels …
The following is an approximate list of Chinese men-of-war engaged at Foochow on the 23rd instant:
Yang-woo, composite corvette, eleven guns, one 11-ton gun（150 lb-shot or shell）, eight 56-pounder Vavaseur breach-loading guns and two 28-pounder brass howitzer, 270 men, captain Chang Cheng.
Wan-nien Tsing, Fu-po, and Fei-yuen, transports, each carrying six Vavaseur breach-loading 56-pounders and one 9-ton muzzle-loading gun, and a complement of 180 men,
Ting-hai, 100 men, one 11-ton gun and four Vavaseur 56-pounder breach-loaders.
An-lan, Captain Lun Kok-cheon, seven guns, 100 men.
Tsing-an, 75 men, three guns.
The last-named two gunboats arrived last month, from Canton.
Four “Mosquito” gunboats two carrying each a 35-ton gun at the bow, and two breach loading 12-pounders at the stern, and two carrying each a 18-ton gun at the bow and two 24-pounders at the stern.
This makes the number of the Chinese fleet in action at Foochow to be eleven, carrying a total armament of fifty-seven guns of different sizes, from a 35-ton gun which fires a shot of 560 pounds to a 12-pounder breach-loader. Besides these there were some sixteen Cantonese war junks each armed with eight guns, 9-pounder muzzle loaders, and about thirty Foochow and Amoy war junks indifferently armed and worse than useless.
