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Departure from Portsmouth
- When
- 26 September 1792
- Where
- Portsmouth
The Macartney Embassy departed Portsmouth on 26 September 1792, aboard three ships, marking the start of the first official British diplomatic mission to China.
The delegation left Portsmouth on 26 September 1792, carrying a large British delegation. George Macartney sailed on HMS Lion, a 64-gun man-of-war, under the command of Captain Sir Erasmus Gower. This departure followed the failure of previous embassies and was intended to address trade imbalances and secure new commercial privileges.
Sources
- Macartney Embassy Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-24
- George Macartney, 1st Earl Macartney Wikipedia, revision of 2026-05-30
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.