[1] The fleet also included the elderly wooden gunboats Caojiang, Zehai, Weijing and Jingyuan, the first three products of the Kiangnan Arsenal (1869 and 1870) and the fourth built at the Foochow Navy Yard in 1872.

Her commander, capitaine de vaisseau Baux, cabled Admiral Amédée Courbet for permission to attack the Chinese with Triomphante and the cruiser d'Estaing.

Jules Ferry's cabinet considered the merits of an attack on the Nanyang fleet, but decided that the risks to business confidence were too great, and notified Courbet that no naval action would be permitted at Shanghai.

Courbet thereupon ordered Triomphante and d'Estaing to leave Shanghai and join him in the Min River, where he was concentrating his squadron against the Fujian Fleet and the Foochow Navy Yard.

The Rendel gunboats Longxiang, Feiting, Cedian and Huwei remained at Shanghai, and the frigate Haian was filled with stones and prepared as a blockship, to be sunk across the entrance to the Huangpu river if the French showed themselves in force.

On the night of 30 August 1884 capitaine de vaisseau Thounens of Parseval ran the gauntlet of the guns of the Wusong forts and escaped without casualties to the open sea.