Posted inPhotographs Source Documents First Opium War (1839) May 23, 2023 An engraving representing one of the battles of the First Opium War, the attack on the First Bar battery in the Canton River. From Edward Belcher (1843). Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Joseph Waters was working aboard the smuggling ship Antonia Pereira just a few years before the outbreak in 1839 of the first of these two wars. See also P. 132 of the By Sea, By Land book. PRINT