Castaways On Forbidden Shores (June 1968 | Volume: 19, Issue: 4)

Castaways On Forbidden Shores

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Authors: Robert S. Gallagher

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June 1968 | Volume 19, Issue 4

A heavy gale had blown up suddenly over the fishing grounds northeast of Japan, and the captain of the whaler Lawrence, ten months out of Poughkeepsie, New York, was in a dilemma. Should he cut loose the whale alongside and sail out the storm, or try to save his valuable prize by letting the ship float with the current? Yankee frugality triumphed; the decision cost Captain Baker his ship and his life.

An hour or so before midnight on May 27, 1846, the drifting Lawrence grounded, rolled on her starboard side, and bilged. Baker quickly launched his whaleboat and, pulling away into the darkness with a handful of the crew, shouted back through the wind, “Each man for himself.” He was never seen again. Nor was the first mate, Mr. Myers, whose boat slipped its bow tackle, plunged into the sea, and was stove to pieces. Only the boat commanded by the second mate, George Howe, survived. Getting safely away from the ship proved to be the easiest part of the trip home.

Of the various hazards American whalemen faced in the mid-nineteenth century, perhaps the most frightening was to be cast up on the forbidding shores of feudal Japan. Since 1638, when that nation’s rulers became convinced that Christianity, disseminated by European missionaries, was a monstrous foreign plot to seize control of their islands, Japan was off limits to outsiders, upon pain of death. Threatening laws to the contrary, foreign shipping in Japanese waters gradually increased. During the first part of the nineteenth century, vessels flying the colors of an expansionist young nation, the United States, began to appear in growing numbers.

In 1842, the Tokugawa shogunate, which ruled Japan in the name of the impotent emperors, became alarmed at the trouncing just administered to a Chinese fleet by the British in the so-called Opium War. Accordingly, the shoguns relaxed their decree of Nincn-naku, or “no second thought”: henceforth, instead of killing castaways, local officials were to give the intruders water and food so that they might quickly sail away.

Howe and his six crewmates were well aware of the danger that awaited them on land, but they had no choice. Their provisions were exhausted by the second day; their small boat was being buffeted constantly, and a driving snow aggravated the misery of the ill-clad seamen. On June 3, Howe steered the boat into a protected bay, where the men caught a seal and enjoyed their first meal in four days.

Afterward, Howe and five of his men hiked inland about a mile, but they found no one and returned to the beach at dusk. The man left at the boat reported a visit by two Orientals, who, upon learning through sign language the number of Lawrence survivors, had fled in terror. What happened next typified the ambivalent character of feudal Japan, which was unwilling to accommodate the outside world and yet unable to prevent its intrusion, undecided whether