12 JAPANESE WRECKS IN THE 



junk which bears the annual tribute money from Liu-Kiu to Japan. Man- 

 jiro afterwards translated Bowditch's Navigator into Japanese, and visited 

 San Francisco as sailing-master of the Japanese steam corvette Kanrin-mara, 

 which arrived there March 17th, 1860. 



20. In 1815, the United States Frigate St. Louis took from Mexico to Ning- 

 po, in China, three shipwreck Japanese, being survivors of the crew of a junk 

 which had drifted from the coast of Japan, entirely' across the Pacific Ocean, 

 and finally stranded on the coast of Mexico, where they remained two years. 

 The Chinese authorities were willing to receive these men and return them to 

 their native country by their annual junk, which sails from Cheefoo to Naga- 

 saki; but the Japanese objected to their landing, owing to the law of 1637. 



In 184:5, the JajJanese authorities informed Sir Edward Belcher, command- 

 ing H.B.S. Samarang, that they would not receive returned Japanese from 

 abroad, but "had sent a junk-full back to the Emperor of Chiua," to whose 

 country they had gone to obtain return passages by the annual junk permitted 

 from Cheefoo to Nagasaki. The above leads to the inference that the 

 Saniarang may have had shipw^recked Japanese seamen on board. 



21. In 1845, April 1st, Captain Mercator Cooper, of Sag Harbor, when in 

 the American whale ship Manhattan, rescued eleven shipwrecked Japanese 

 mariners from St. Peters, a small island lying a few degrees southeast of Nip- 

 hon, and took them to Yedo Bay, where they were received undt;r exception. 

 Captain Cooper is also reported to have fallen in with a sinking junk, from 

 which he rescued as many more Japanese seamen. [See Dr. C. F. Winslow's 

 account in Friend of Februarj^ 2d, 1846.] 



22. In 1847, a French whaleship while cruising off Stapleton Island, 

 sighted a fire-signal on the shore, and sent a boat to the relief of five Japanese 

 sailors, who were in a helpless plight; the only survivors of a crew, whose dis- 

 abled junk lay stranded on the beach of a small bay. Later, about 1853, a 

 party of officers from the U. S. steam frigate Susquehanna landed and sur- 

 veyed this wreck, which they then described as " still partly kept together by 

 large nails of coiaper, and portions of sheets of metal. Her planks, fastened 

 together at the edge, were but little rubbed or decayed." 



23. In 1847, April 21st, the Bremen ship Otahelte, Captain Weitung, when 

 in lat. 35^ N., long. 156^ E., fell in with a Japanese junk in distress, which 

 had lost her rudder and had been driven off the coast of Japan in a gale No- 

 vember, 1846, and had drifted five months. Took off the crew, consisting of 

 nine men, also six tons of wax. She was about 80 tons burden and chiefly lad- 

 en with paper belonging to Osaka, and bound north. Captain Weitung kept 

 them on board four weeks, and May 19th, 1847, put them on board a junk in 

 the Straits of Matsmai. [See Polynesian, October 17, 1847, and Friend, Dec- 

 ember 2, 1847.] 



24. In 1848, Captain Cox of New London, Conn., picked up fifteen of 

 twenty Japanese seamen from a disabled junk in lat. 40° N., long. 170^ W., 

 and kept them on board six months during a cruise in the Ochotsk sea, and 

 finally landed them at Lahaina, where they remained six or eight months. 



25. In 1850, during the autumn, S. Sentharo, Toro and J. Heco — the lat- 

 ter then aged 13 years — left Osaka in a junk for Yedo. After discharging 

 and reloading they started to return via Woragawa. After leaving the latter 



