Home > Japanese warship Kanrin Maru

Kanrin Maru (Japanese: 咸臨丸) was Japan's first sail and screw-driven steam warship. She was ordered in 1853 from Holland, the only country with which Japan had diplomatic relations throughout its period of Seclusion, by the Shogun's government, the Bakufu. She was delivered in 1855, barely one year after the forcible opening of Japan to trade by Commodore Perry. The ship was used at the newly established Naval School of Nagasaki in order to build up knowledge of Western warship technology.

The Kanrin Maru, as a screw-driven steam warship, represented a new technological advance in warship design which had been introduced in the West only ten years earlier with the HMS Rattler ( 1843). She allowed Japan to get its first experience with some of the newest advances in ship design.

1 First Japanese embassy to the US

Five years later, the Bakufu sent the Kanrin Maru on a mission to the United States, clearly wanting to make a point to the world that Japan now mastered western navigation techniques and western ship technologies. On 19 January 1860, the Kanrin Maru, sailed by Katsu Kaishu (as ship captain), John Manjiro and Fukuzawa Yukichi, left Uraga for San Francisco.

They became the second official Japanese embassy to cross the Pacific Ocean, around 250 years after the embassy of Hasegawa Rokuemon to Mexico and then Europe in 1614Events April 5 In Virginia, Native American Pocahontas marries English colonist John Rolfe. October 11 Adriaen Block and a group of Amsterdam merchants petition the States General for exclusive trading rights in the area he explored and named " New Nether, on the Japanese-built galleon San Juan BautistaSan Juan Bautista (“St John Baptist”) (originally called Date Maru, in Japanese) was one of Japan's first Japanese-built Western-style sail warships, and the first one to cross the Pacific in 1614. She was of the Spanish Galleon type, known in Japan as Ku.

Kanrin Maru was accompanied by an United States Navy ship, the USS PowhatanUSS Powhatan was a United States Navy sidewheel steam frigate. USS Powhatan's keel was laid on 6 August 1847 at Norfolk, Virginia. Her engines were constructed by Mehaffy & Company of Gosport, Virginia. She was launched on 14 February 1850. Tonnage: 2,415. From San Francisco, the delegation continued the trip to Washington via Panama on U.S. vessels.

The first ever Japanese delegation to the United States, arrived on the Kanrin Maru in 1860Events March 6 Abraham Lincoln speaks against slavery in New Haven, Connecticut April 3 The Pony Express makes its first run. May 9 The Constitutional Union Party holds its convention and nominates John Bell for President of the United States. May 13 Batt.

The official objective of the mission was to send the first ever Japanese embassy to the US, and to ratify the new treaty of Friendship, Commerce, and Navigation between the United States and Japan. The mission also tried, in vain, to obtain a revision of some of the "unequal" clauses of the treaties signed during Commodore Perry's negociation in 1854.