The Lady Hughes affair was an international incident in 1784 between Great Britain and the Qing dynasty. On 24 November 1784, the British merchantman Lady Hughes fired a gun salute for a nearby Dano-Norwegian ship in the Thirteen Factories neighbourhood of Canton. The salute injured three Chinese men in a nearby boat, two of whom died of their injuries. In response, local Qing officials detained Lady Hughes and refused to release the ship until her crew handed over the sailor who had fired the salute. Once he was in their custody, Qing authorities executed the sailor by strangulation on 2 December.