Gordon Bremer

Gordon Bremer was a Royal Navy officer whose long career included service in the Napoleonic wars and senior command during the First Opium War. In 1840 he led British naval operations along the Chinese coast and accepted the surrender of Chusan. After the Convention of Chuenpi he formally took possession of Hong Kong Island for Britain in January 1841, although diplomatic terms remained unsettled. He later became commander-in-chief at Portsmouth.

Bremer belongs to the historical world recreated in Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy, particularly Flood of Fire, which follows the fleet, soldiers and merchants involved in the Opium War. He is usually a background figure rather than a developed protagonist. His role allows fiction to show how naval occupation could create facts on the ground before treaties and governments had agreed precisely what had been acquired.