Japanese warship Shohei Maru

Shōhei Maru (昇平丸) was a Japanese wooden-hulled three-masted barque-rigged sailing ship. Japan's second modern Western-style warship, she was built in 218 years since the beginning of the Tokugawa shogunate’s national seclusion policy which outlawed the construction of ocean-worthy vessels. She served with the Bakumatsu period Tokugawa navy. She should not be confused with the World War II passenger/cargo vessel of the same name, sunk by the submarine USS Spadefish (SS-411) off of Korea.

Background
During the late 19th century, incursions by foreign vessels into Japanese territorial waters increased, challenging the government’s official policy of national seclusion, and threatening the stability of the Tokugawa regime. Citing the need to protect Japanese sovereignty over the Ryukyu islands, Satsuma Domain daimyō Shimazu Nariakira successfully petitioned the Tokugawa shogunate to lift the prohibition on the construction of large ocean-going vessels in 1852. A shipyard was constructed on Sakurajima and the new vessel was launched in May 1853 in anticipation of the announced return of United States Commodore Commodore Perry and his fleet of “Black Ships” to Edo Bay. Named Shōhei Maru, the new ship was apparently built using ship construction manuals obtained from the Netherlands via the trading outpost of Dejima, and occasional observations of foreign vessels roaming the waters off Japan. Nakahama Manjirō may have contributed to its design from his personal experiences, but this is uncertain.

Service record
Shōhei Maru took longer to complete than was anticipated, and was commissioned on December 12, 1854, by which time the Hōō Maru was completed by the Uraga bugyō in July 1854. In order to distinguish the vessel from foreign vessels of similar design, Shōhei Maru flew a Rising Sun Flag. Shōhei Maru was transferred to Edo in February 1855 and commissioned into the Tokugawa shogunate navy in August 1855. It was later assigned to the Nagasaki Naval Training Center as a training vessel.

Following the Boshin War of the Meiji Restoration, Shōhei Maru was seized by the new Meiji government, but was considered too obsolete for use by the fledgling Imperial Japanese Navy and was assigned to the Colonization Ministry together with the Kanrin Maru and was used as a transport for the development of the northern island of Hokkaidō. She was wrecked after she ran aground on a sandbar off what is now Kaminokuni, Hokkaidō (41.86667°N, 140.11667°W) after a storm on 2 March 1870.

Although Shōhei Maru represented a return to the building of ocean-going warships on the part of the Bakufu after two centuries of prohibition, Japan had built several western-style sail ships in the beginning of the 17th century, such as the galleon San Juan Bautista.