Japanese warship Shohei Maru
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| Career |  |
|---|---|
| Builder: | Sakura-jima, Seto-Mura |
| Laid down: | 1853 |
| Launched: | April 1854 |
| Commissioned: | January 1855 |
| Decommissioned: | 1870 |
| Fate: | Wrecked, 1870 |
| General characteristics | |
| Propulsion: | 3-masted sailing ship |
| Armament: | 10 guns |
Shōhei Maru (Japanese: 昇平丸) was Japan's first Western-style warship following the country's period of Seclusion. She was ordered in 1852 by the government of the Shogun to the southern fief of Satsuma in the island of Kyūshū, in anticipation of the announced mission of Commodore Perry in 1853.
The ship was commissioned in 1854 and sent to Edo in February 1855, before being transferred to the Bakufu government in August 1855.
Shōhei Maru was apparently built using sailship construction manuals from the Netherlands, and some level of hands-on knowledge may have been obtained by occasional observations of foreign vessels roaming the waters of Japan.
The ship was used mainly for training by the Bakufu, and was seized by the new Imperial government following the Meiji Restoration in 1868.
Shōhei Maru was then used as a merchandise transport for the development of the northern island of Hokkaidō, where she was wrecked after a storm on 2 March 1870.
Although Shohei 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 sailships in the beginning of the 17th century, such as the galleon San Juan Bautista.
