The backstory reads like a double-cross wrapped in colonial diplomacy. Raffles had arrived in the Dutch East Indies in 1810 and immediately began scheming to pry Palembang from Dutch influence. He opened correspondence with Sultan Mahmud Badaruddin II, proposing a treaty: expel the Dutch, and Britain would supply arms. The weapons were sent, but they arrived too late for Palembang to assist in the British invasion of Java in September 1811. Instead, Badaruddin's forces turned those very arms against the Dutch garrison on the Musi on September 14. The massacre gave Britain both a moral pretext and a strategic opening. By December 1811, with Java secured, British attention turned fully toward Palembang and the prize of Bangka's tin deposits.

Gillespie's flotilla fought the river itself as much as any enemy. Strong currents and contrary winds slowed the advance, and Badaruddin sent envoy after envoy downstream, stalling for time. Gillespie refused the sultan's request that he enter Palembang alone and unguarded. As the British pushed upriver, they encountered armed proa blocking the waterway, though none dared engage; the boats scattered whenever British rowboats gave chase. On April 22, the flotilla reached a gun battery and a line of ships forming a blockade. No shots were fired. By morning, the defenders had melted away, abandoning 102 cannons. That evening brought the expedition's most dramatic moment: a fleet of fire rafts drifted downriver toward the anchored British ships. Sailors scrambled into boats, lashed ropes to the blazing rafts, and towed them clear without a single vessel taking damage.

Inside Palembang's kraton, a bitter argument was unfolding. Badaruddin wanted to fight. His younger brother, who had contested the throne since their father's death, urged retreat instead. The succession dispute that had simmered for years now shaped the fate of the sultanate. As Gillespie's ships drew closer, Badaruddin finally chose to flee, loading his treasury, armory, and loyal retainers onto boats. The city behind him descended into chaos as soldiers who had been left behind turned to looting. Gillespie, impatient, rowed ahead of his fleet with only a small guard and arrived at Palembang on the evening of April 25. He found the kraton abandoned, its 242 cannons silent. The Union Jack was raised over the city on April 28, and Badaruddin's accommodating brother was installed as Sultan Ahmad Najamuddin II.

Najamuddin promptly ceded Bangka and neighboring Belitung to the British, who renamed them with characteristically imperial flair: Bangka became Duke of York Island, and the port town of Muntok was rechristened Minto after Lord Minto. But tropical disease accomplished what Palembang's guns had not. The British garrison on Bangka suffered devastating mortality, and they abandoned the island before Dutch rule was restored in 1816. Badaruddin, meanwhile, proved far from finished. He established a guerrilla stronghold on the Rawas River and repelled 150 British soldiers sent to capture him in July 1812. He even briefly regained the throne through an indemnity deal, only to have the colonial government in Batavia annul the agreement and reinstall his brother. The Dutch later reversed course again, deposing Najamuddin in 1818 and restoring Badaruddin, before sending two more expeditions against him in 1819 and 1821. After his final defeat, Badaruddin was exiled to the remote island of Ternate, where he died in 1852, never seeing Palembang again.