Page:Japan by the Japanese (1904).djvu/517
The Clan of Satsuma built two or three sailing vessels of the same type, all three-masted, while the Clan of Mito turned out a similar vessel at Ishikawa-jima in Yedo. The instances just mentioned form the first examples of the European style of shipbuilding in Japan.
About this time an event took place which supplied a powerful stimulus and useful assistance to the development of shipbuilding in Japan. In the 1st year of Ansei (1854) the Russian warship Diana had her bottom destroyed by a tidal wave, and was finally sunk at the port of Shimoda, province of Izu. There being no available ship by which the crew of the lost ship, over 500 in number, could go home, they set about building two schooners with the aid of Japanese artisans. These vessels being completed by the spring of the following year, they set sail for Vladivostock. The Japanese carpenters and blacksmiths employed by the Russians on this occasion had a unique opportunity to learn the European method of shipbuilding. They did not throw their opportunity away, for it was by employing them that the Tokugawa Government was afterward able to build a number of sailing vessels similar in style to the schooners constructed by the Russians. The majority of these workmen were subsequently employed under the newly-established Naval Department of the Shogunate; and in course of time they gained so much experience that, when the naval dockyard was established at Yokosuka, they formed the nucleus of its working force.
In the 2nd year of Ansei (1855) the King of the Netherlands presented one of his war-vessels to the Tokugawa Shogun, who renamed it as Kwan-ko Maru, and stationed it at Nagasaki as a training-ship. At the same time there arrived at Nagasaki several naval instructors from Holland in compliance with the request made to the Government of that country by the Tokugawa Government in the previous year. The last-mentioned Government selected a number of young men, and put them on board the Kwan-ko Maru to learn navigation and naval science under the newly-arrived instructors. This was the origin of the Japanese navy.
Having thus come into the possession of some war-vessels, and having opened a course of training in the naval arts and science, the Tokugawa Government naturally desired to open works where instruction might be given in the art of shipbuilding, beside making the ordinary repairs on these ships. It therefore applied to the Netherlands Government for the purchase of the necessary machinery, and also for the engagement of some experts. The experts and the machinery arrived at Nagasaki in the 4th year of Ansei (1857), and, selecting a suitable site at Akuno-ura at that port, the erection of the works