Kanrin-maru

Kanrin Maru, Japan's first screw-driven steam warship, 1855.
History
Name:	Kanrin Maru
Ordered:	1853
Builder:	F.Smit, Kinderdijk, Netherlands
Acquired:	1857
Decommissioned:	1871
Fate:	Wrecked in a typhoon, 1871
General characteristics
Displacement:	300 t (295 long tons)
Length:	50 m (164 ft 1 in) o/a
Beam:	7.3 m (23 ft 11 in)
Propulsion:	Coal-fired steam engine, 100 hp
Sail plan:	3-masted sail
Speed:	6 knots (6.9 mph; 11 km/h)
Armament:	12 guns

Kanrin Maru (咸臨丸) was Japan's first sail and screw-driven steam corvette (the first steam-driven Japanese warship, Kankō Maru, was a side-wheeler). She was ordered in 1853 from the Netherlands, the only Western country with which Japan had diplomatic relations throughout its period of sakoku (seclusion), by the Shogun's government, the Bakufu. She was delivered on September 21, 1857 (with the name Japan) by Lt. Willem Huyssen van Kattendijke of the Dutch navy. The ship was used at the newly established Naval School of Nagasaki in order to build up knowledge of Western warship technology.

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 HMS Rattler (1843). The ship was built by the shipyard of Fop Smit at Kinderdijk in the Netherlands, where the virtually identical screw-steamship with schooner-rig Bali of the Dutch navy was also built in 1856. She allowed Japan to get its first experience with some of the newest advances in ship design.

Three years later, the Bakufu sent Kanrin Maru on a mission to the United States, clearly wanting to make a point to the world that Japan had now mastered western navigation techniques and western ship technologies. On 9 February 1860 (18 January in the Japanese calendar), the Kanrin Maru, captained by Katsu Kaishū together with John Manjiro, Fukuzawa Yukichi, and a total of 96 Japanese sailors, and the American officer John M. Brooke, left Uraga for San Francisco.