INTRODUCTION

ALL STORIES HAVE a two sides and those of military encounter particularly so. Truth is often the first victim of war. The ‘Phaeton Incident’ illustrates this. British documents and Japanese ones entirely fail to match in their interpretations of events. Moreover, there is a third angle, for the Dutch were middlemen in conveying the British intentions to the Japanese and, it will be suggested, they doctored them in the process.

The principal British document has not generally been consulted by historians, although it is short and readily available. The Dutch record has recently become accessible in English, although in the original language has long been in print, and often used before; the prime account, by the head of the Dutch station in Japan, was compiled and published only in 1833, from notes kept at the time, or perhaps from memory. There are three types of Japanese document, firstly an official compilation, consisting of period documents put together for the shogunate at the end of the Edo Period, the Tsūkō ichiran (Overview of maritime encounters), secondly two journals made by persons present, and finally a contextualising overview composed by a well-known scholar in Edo.

All agree on the main sequence of events: on 4 October 1808, or 15th of the 8th month by the Japanese calendar, Fleetwood Pellew, a young commander in the Royal Navy, took HMS Phaeton into Nagasaki Bay. The ship did little more than lie in the roadstead, although it took two Dutchmen prisoner, legitimately, as the Low Countries and Great Britain were at war; they served as interpreters, but were soon released as a goodwill gesture to Japan; the Phaeton also launched some boats to scout the bay. The British requested, and received, supplies of food and water. Almost exactly forty-eight hours later, they sailed out. No shots were fired from either side. Yet the repercussions of this brief intrusion would be huge and last for decades. In the night after the ship’s departure, 6 October, the governor of Nagasaki (Nagasaki bugyō ), Matsudaira Zusho-no-kami Yasuhide (some documents call him Yasuhira), took his life to make amends for allowing the first ever European man-of-war to enter Nagasaki, and then to leave again untouched. It is a touch ironic that ‘Yasuhide’ can be understood to mean ‘peaceful Britain’.