In 1860, on their last day at New York, the party of the embassy to the United States set eyes on the British steamer Great Eastern, then the largest ship in the world. The diaries of those who went set down how they saw her, almost as though in competition.
To begin with, the ship they sailed in was large
For the voyage home the Americans had ready the Niagara, then the newest warship in the world. She had been named by Lane, President Buchanan's niece. Kimura Tetsuta, an attendant of Oguri's, set her down like this.
“The Naiakira is a screw steamer; her length three hundred and eighty feet [sixty-four and a half ken by our measure], her depth thirty-two feet, her breadth fifty feet, her steam six thousand horsepower. … Fifteen cannon and four small guns; she can store a thousand tons of coal, and burns forty to fifty tons in a day and a night.”
He converts the feet into ken and counts even the coal burned. The passage shows plainly how Japanese eyes were trying to take a ship in by numbers rather than by calling her fine.
“The greatest ship on all four seas”
But just as they were to leave the port of New York in that Niagara, the party saw something of another order altogether. Kimura Tetsuta writes of it.
“As it chanced, the great English ship Daitō lay there at anchor. She is the greatest ship on all four seas: her length seven hundred and fifty feet [a hundred and twenty-seven ken by our measure], six masts, two fire-wheels (paddle wheels on either side), one screw; she can carry ten thousand men and run three hundred and thirty ri in a day and a night.”
The “Daitō ship” is the Great Eastern. By Sakamoto Fujiyoshi's note she was a steel ship 223 metres long and 27 metres in the beam, completed at London in 1857. With six masts and paddle wheels and a screw together, she carried in herself every means of propulsion of the age.
Another of the attendants, Fukushima Yoshikoto, took her for a warship.
“There is a great English warship.” “Five funnels, steam engines in four places; she is the first of the great ships of the world.”
It was no wonder. Passenger ship though she was, she carried forty-six guns and was built so that she could serve as a warship. Worked as a warship, she was reckoned to take ten thousand men.
Katō Somō puts the difference in size between the two ships into words plainly.
“The Naiakira is so huge that she looks down on an ordinary large ship from above; but this new great English ship, the Girīto Īsuteru, is so large that from the Naiakira one looks far up at her.”
Even the Niagara looked small beside the Great Eastern. That was what the party felt that day.
The rumour that ran through the port
A ship said to hold ten thousand men made not only the Japanese stare but the citizens of New York as well. An odd rumour went round the city: “the English have sent this ship with a plan to carry the Japanese envoys off to England”. Because of it, so the account goes, the American authorities tightened the guard on the envoys. The air of English and American nerves over a Japan only just opened had gathered around one huge ship.
The next morning the Niagara moved off quietly. Fukushima Yoshikoto's diary opens like this.
“Thirteenth day of the fifth month, fine. This day we left the port of New York, and the ship ran to the south-east.”
Aboard the newest warship in the world, and having looked up at the largest ship in the world, the embassy left America. Four and a half years later, what Oguri set out to build at Yokosuka was a place where iron ships like these could be built and repaired by Japanese hands.
There was one more commotion just before she sailed. A man had ridden hard from the west to deliver a letter the Kanrin Maru had entrusted to the Pony Express on leaving San Francisco. Over the Rocky Mountains, across the Colorado River, through the plains and the desert he rode it through, changing horses one after another. The letter came in with no margin at all, just before the Niagara left the port of New York. It said that several of the Kanrin Maru's crew were ill and could not be taken home, that two men were being left behind to attend them along with three thousand dollars, and asked that they be looked after. Not one of the embassy's own party had fallen ill, and for those leaving New York there was nothing to be done but commend the sick at San Francisco to the Americans.
Source: Sakamoto Fujiyoshi, Oguri Kōzukenosuke no Shōgai (the life of Oguri Kōzukenosuke), Kōdansha, 1987 (including quotations from Kimura Tetsuta, from Fukushima Yoshikoto's Kaki Kōkai Nisshi (a log of the voyage to the flowery-flag country), and from Katō Somō)
→ The man who saw the Washington Navy Yard → A great welcome at New York, and the “Tommy Polka” → The voyage home