Kanrin Maru

Kanrin Maru (咸臨丸; Unyielding) 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 shōgun's government, the Bakufu. She was delivered on September 21, 1857 (with the name Japan), by Lt. Willem Huyssen van Kattendijke of the Royal Dutch Navy. The ship was used at the newly established Naval School of Nagasaki in order to build up knowledge of Western warship technology. As a screw-driven steam warship, Kanrin Maru 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 Fop Smit (later known as L. Smit en Zoon) in Kinderdijk, the Netherlands. The virtually identical screw-steamship with schooner-rig Bali of the Dutch navy was also built here in 1856. She allowed Japan to get its first experience with some of the newest advances in ship design.