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Christopher And Cosmas
Christopher and Cosmas were two Japanese men, only known by their Christian names, who are recorded to have travelled across the Pacific on a Spanish galleon in 1587, and were later forced to accompany the English navigator Thomas Cavendish to England, Brazil and the Southern Atlantic, where they disappeared with the sinking of his ship in 1592. Western accounts Pacific crossing on a Spanish galleon They are first mentioned by the navigator Francis Pretty, in Richard Hakluyt's account of the travels of Cavendish. He writes that on 4 November 1587 the 27-year-old Cavendish, with two ships the ''Desire'' (120 tons) and the ''Content'' (60 tons) intercepted a Spanish ship, a Manila galleon named ''Santa Ana'', off the coast of Baja California (at Bernabe Bay, some 20 miles east of Cabo San Lucas). Cavendish disembarked the crew onshore, took the rich cargo, and put the ship on fire. But he also chose to keep with him several of the crew in view of his future voyages. In particul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Galleon
Galleons were large, multi-decked sailing ships first used as armed cargo carriers by European states from the 16th to 18th centuries during the age of sail and were the principal vessels drafted for use as warships until the Anglo-Dutch Wars of the mid-1600s. Galleons generally carried three or more masts with a lateen fore-and-aft rig on the rear masts, were carvel built with a prominent squared off raised stern, and used square-rigged sail plans on their fore-mast and main-masts. Such ships were the mainstay of maritime commerce into the early 19th century, and were often drafted into use as auxiliary naval war vessels—indeed, were the mainstay of contending fleets through most of the 150 years of the Age of Exploration—before the Anglo-Dutch wars brought purpose-built ship-rigged warships, ships of the line, that thereafter dominated war at sea during the remainder of the age of sail. Etymology The word ''galleon'' 'large ship' comes from Old French ''galion'' 'arme ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plymouth
Plymouth () is a port city and unitary authority in South West England. It is located on the south coast of Devon, approximately south-west of Exeter and south-west of London. It is bordered by Cornwall to the west and south-west. Plymouth's early history extends to the Bronze Age when a first settlement emerged at Mount Batten. This settlement continued as a trading post for the Roman Empire, until it was surpassed by the more prosperous village of Sutton founded in the ninth century, now called Plymouth. In 1588, an English fleet based in Plymouth intercepted and defeated the Spanish Armada. In 1620, the Pilgrim Fathers departed Plymouth for the New World and established Plymouth Colony, the second English settlement in what is now the United States of America. During the English Civil War, the town was held by the Roundhead, Parliamentarians and was besieged between 1642 and 1646. Throughout the Industrial Revolution, Plymouth grew as a commercial shipping port, handling ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tanaka Shōsuke
Tanaka Shōsuke (田中 勝助, also 田中 勝介) was an important Japanese technician and trader in metals from Kyoto during the beginning of the 17th century. According to Japanese archives (駿府記) he was a representative of the great Osaka merchant Gotō Shōsaburō (後藤 少三郎). He is the first recorded Japanese to have travelled to the Americas in 1610 (although some Japanese, such as Christopher and Cosmas, are known to have sailed across the Pacific on Spanish galleons as early as 1587). Returning to Japan in 1611, he again went to North America in 1613, with the embassy of Hasekura Tsunenaga. In total, he accomplished two round trips between Japan and North America and helped establish trade and diplomatic relations between Japan and the Spanish Empire. Background Before the travels of Tanaka Shōsuke, Japan had few contacts with the Spanish, and had instead relied upon the Kingdom of Portugal, Portuguese, the Ming dynasty, Chinese, and to a much lesser exte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Red Seal Ships
were Japanese armed merchant sailing ships bound for Southeast Asia, Southeast Asian ports with red-sealed letters patent issued by the early Tokugawa shogunate in the first half of the 17th century. Between 1600 and 1635, more than 350 Japanese ships went overseas under this permit system. Origins From the 13th to the 16th century, Japanese ships were quite active in Asian waters, often in the role of "Wokou, wakō" pirates who plundered the coast of the History of China#Imperial China, Chinese Empire. Official trading missions were also sent to China, such as the Tenryūji-bune around 1341. Wakō activity was efficiently curbed in the late 16th century with the interdiction of piracy by Hideyoshi, and the successful campaigns against pirate activity on the Chinese coast by Ming dynasty generals. Between the 15th and the 16th century, the main trading intermediary in Eastern Asia was the island Ryūkyū Kingdom, kingdom of the Ryūkyū (modern Okinawa), which exchanged J ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nikolai Rezanov
Nikolai Petrovich Rezanov (russian: Николай Петрович Резанов) ( – ), a Russian nobleman and statesman, promoted the project of Russian colonization of Alaska and California to three successive Emperors of All Russia—Catherine the Great, Paul, and Aleksander I. Aleksander I commissioned Rezanov as Russian ambassador to Japan (1804) with the aim of concluding a commercial treaty. In order to get to his post he was appointed co-commander of the First Russian circumnavigation (1803-1806), led by Adam Johann von Krusenstern. Rezanov left the expedition in 1805 when it returned to Kamchatka after visiting Japan (1804-1805). Rezanov wrote a lexicon of the Japanese language and several other works, which are preserved in the library of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences, of which he was a member. Rezanov's greatest legacy proved the founding of the Russian-American Company in 1799. Early life Rezanov was born in Saint Petersburg on March 28, 1764 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. The rise of the Russian Empire coincided with the decline of neighbouring rival powers: the Swedish Empire, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Qajar Iran, the Ottoman Empire, and Qing China. It also held colonies in North America between 1799 and 1867. Covering an area of approximately , it remains the third-largest empire in history, surpassed only by the British Empire and the Mongol Empire; it ruled over a population of 125.6 million people per the 1897 Russian census, which was the only census carried out during the entire imperial period. Owing to its geographic extent across three continents at its peak, it featured great ethnic, linguistic, religious, and economic diversity. From the 10th–17th centuries, the land ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Unalaska, Alaska
Unalaska ( ale, Iluulux̂; russian: Уналашка) is the chief center of population in the Aleutian Islands. The city is in the Aleutians West Census Area, a regional component of the Unorganized Borough in the U.S. state of Alaska. Unalaska is located on Unalaska Island and neighboring Amaknak Island in the Aleutian Islands off mainland Alaska. The population was 4,254 at the 2020 census, which is 81% of the entire Aleutians West Census Area. Unalaska is the second largest city in the Unorganized Borough, behind Bethel. The Aleut (Unangan) people have lived on Unalaska Island for thousands of years. The Unangan, who were the first to inhabit the island of Unalaska, named it "Ounalashka", meaning "near the peninsula". The regional native corporation has adopted this moniker, and is known as the Ounalashka Corporation. The Russian fur trade reached Unalaska when Stepan Glotov and his crew arrived on August 1, 1759. Natives, Russians and their descendants comprised most of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wakamiya-maru
The Wakamiya-maru was a Japanese cargo ship whose crew members became the first Japanese to circumnavigate the globe after their ship went off course after getting caught in a storm ''en route'' from Ishinomaki in the Tōhoku region of northern Japan to Edo (now Tokyo) in November 1793. At the time, under the Tokugawa shogunate, Japan was pursuing a policy of isolation, and its borders were essentially closed. However, after sixteen days at sea, the ''Wakamiya-maru'' arrived at the island of Unalaska in the north Pacific. Then a Russian territory, the crew were rescued by Russians stationed on the island and transferred to Irkutsk. At the time, under Catherine the Great, Russia was seeking to initiate trade relations with Japan. However, Catherine the Great's death soon after the sailors' arrival in Irkutsk led to them spending seven years in the city, before being summoned to St. Petersburg shortly after Alexander I became Tsar. Of the surviving crew members, four wished to go ba ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Otokichi
, also known as Yamamoto Otokichi and later known as John Matthew Ottoson (1818 – January 1867), was a Japanese castaway originally from the area of Onoura near modern-day Mihama, on the west coast of the Chita Peninsula in Aichi Prefecture. Biography Otokichi was from Mihama, Aichi Prefecture. In 1832, at age 14, he served as a crew member on a rice transport ship bound for Edo, the ''Hojunmaru'' (宝順丸), in length with a cargo of 150 tons and a crew of 14. The ship left on October 11, 1832, but was caught in a storm and blown off-course far out in the Pacific Ocean. Drift to America The ship, without a mast or a rudder, was carried across the northern Pacific Ocean by currents. It drifted for 14 months, during which the crew lived on desalinated seawater and on the rice of their cargo. Several crew members died of scurvy; only three survived by the time they arrived at Cape Alava, the westernmost point of Washington's Olympic Peninsula, in 1834. The three survi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Circumnavigation
Circumnavigation is the complete navigation around an entire island, continent, or astronomical object, astronomical body (e.g. a planet or natural satellite, moon). This article focuses on the circumnavigation of Earth. The first recorded circumnavigation of the Earth was the Magellan's circumnavigation, Magellan–Elcano expedition, which sailed from Sanlucar de Barrameda, Spain in 1519 and returned in 1522, after crossing the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pacific, and Indian Ocean, Indian oceans. Since the rise of commercial aviation in the late 20th century, circumnavigating Earth is straightforward, usually taking days instead of years. Today, the challenge of circumnavigating Earth has shifted towards human and technological endurance, speed, and List of circumnavigations#Miscellaneous, less conventional methods. Etymology The word ''circumnavigation'' is a noun formed from the verb ''circumnavigate'', from the past participle of the Latin verb '':wikt:circumnav ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saint Helena
Saint Helena () is a British overseas territory located in the South Atlantic Ocean. It is a remote volcanic tropical island west of the coast of south-western Africa, and east of Rio de Janeiro in South America. It is one of three constituent parts of the British Overseas Territory of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha. Saint Helena measures about and has a population of 4,439 per the 2021 census. It was named after Helena, mother of Constantine I. It is one of the most remote islands in the world and was uninhabited when discovered by the Portuguese enroute to the Indian subcontinent in 1502. For about four centuries the island was an important stopover for ships from Europe to Asia and back, while sailing around the African continent, until the opening of the Suez canal. St Helena is the United Kingdom's second-oldest overseas territory after Bermuda. Saint Helena is known for being the site of Napoleon's second exile, following his final defeat in 1815. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
