Kankō Maru
Kankō Maru, Japan's first steam warship, 1855
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| History | |
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 Netherlands
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| Name: | Soembing |
| Owner: | Royal Netherlands Navy |
| Builder: | Amsterdam Naval Yards |
| Laid down: | 20 August 1850 |
| Launched: | 1852 |
| Commissioned: | 1852 |
| Fate: | Presented to Japan 1855 |
 Empire of Japan
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| Name: | Kankō Maru |
| Acquired: | 25 August 1855 |
| Decommissioned: | March 1876 |
| Fate: | scrapped |
| General characteristics | |
| Displacement: | 781 t (769 long tons) |
| Length: | 66 m (216 ft 6 in) o/a |
| Beam: | 9.1 m (29 ft 10 in) |
| Draught: | 4.2 m (13 ft 9 in) |
| Propulsion: | Coal-fired steam engine, 150 hp (110 kW) |
| Sail plan: | Jackass-barque-rigged |
| Armament: |
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Kankō Maru (観光丸 Kankō-maru?) was Japan's first steam-powered warship. It was presented to the Tokugawa shogunate ruling Japan during the Bakumatsu period as a gift from King William III of the Netherlands to assist Janus Henricus Donker Curtius, head of the Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij (Netherlands Trading Society) in Japan in his efforts to establish formal diplomatic relations and the opening of Japanese ports to Dutch merchant vessels.
Since the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Tokugawa shogunate ruling Japan pursued a policy of isolating the country from outside influences. Foreign trade was maintained only with the Dutch and the Chinese and was conducted exclusively at Nagasaki under a strict government monopoly. No foreigners were allowed to set foot in Japan, and no Japanese was permitted to travel aboard. In June 1635 a law was proclaimed prohibiting the construction of large, ocean-capable vessels. However, by the early nineteenth century, this policy of isolation was increasingly under challenge. In 1844, King William II of the Netherlands sent a letter urging Japan to end the isolation policy on its own before change would be forced from the outside.
Following the July 1853 visit of Commodore Perry, and intense debate erupted within the Japanese government on how to handle the unprecedented threat to the national’s capital, and the only universal consensus was that steps be taken immediately to bolster Japan’s coastal defenses. The law forbidding construction of large vessels was repealed, and many of the feudal domains took immediate steps to construct or purchase warships. However, the ships produced within Japan were based on reverse-engineering of designs some decades old, and the ships were already obsolete by the time of their completion. The need for steam-powered warships to match the foreign "Black ships" was a pressing issue, and the Tokugawa shogunate approached the Dutch for the supply of such vessels.
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Wikipedia