Tonkin Flotilla  The Tonkin Flotilla (), a force of despatch vessels and gunboats used for policing the rivers and waterways of the Tonkin Delta, was created in the summer of 1883, during the period of undeclared hostilities that preceded the Sino-French War (August 1884–April 1885). In March 1882, on the eve of Commandant Henri Rivière's seizure of the citadel of Hanoi, France had two naval divisions in the Far East. The seas to the east of the Hainan Strait were the responsibility of Rear Admiral Charles Meyer's Far East naval division ("division navale de l'Extrême-Orient"). France's interests in Indochina were protected by Rivière's Cochinchina naval division ("division navale de Cochinchine"), responsible for monitoring coastal navigation between Singapore and the Hainan Strait and along the rivers of Cochinchina and Cambodia. Several vessels under Rivière's command were normally stationed in Cochinchina or Cambodia, including the troopship "Drac", the light frigate "Alouette" and the small gunboats "Framée" and "Javeline". "Tilsitt", the flagship of the Cochinchina naval division, was disarmed and in permanent dock at Saigon, and served as the division's storehouse and administrative centre. Most of the division's vessels, however, were stationed in Tonkin, where they were enforcing the right of free navigation on the Red River conceded to France by the Vietnamese government in 1874. Rivière's command in Tonkin consisted of the light frigates "Hamelin", "Parseval" and "Antilope" (the latter due to be replaced shortly by "Pluvier"), the heavy gunboats "Lynx" and "Vipère", the seagoing gunboats "Fanfare", "Léopard" and "Surprise", and the smaller river gunboats "Carabine", "Éclair", "Hache", "Massue", "Trombe" and "Yatagan". The heavy gunboats had crews of 77 men and mounted four cannon, while the smaller gunboats had two cannon each. They all carried a Hotchkiss "canon-revolver" in their tops. Following Rivière's defeat and death at the Battle of Paper Bridge (19 June 1883), the navy ministry created a new Tonkin Coasts naval division ("division navale des côtes du Tonkin") under the command of Admiral Amédée Courbet, whose mission was to cut off the flow of weapons and ammunition from China to the Black Flag Army by blockading the Gulf of Tonkin.