Kanrin Maru

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Kanrin Maru, Japan's first screw-driven steam warship, 1855.
History
Japan
Name	Kanrin Maru
Ordered	1853
Builder	L. Smit en Zoon, Kinderdijk, Netherlands
Acquired	1857
Decommissioned	1871
Fate	Wrecked in a typhoon, 1871
General characteristics
Class and type	Bali-class sloop
Displacement	300 t (295 long tons)
Length	50 m (164 ft 1 in) o/a
Beam	7.3 m (23 ft 11 in)
Propulsion	Coal-fired steam engine, 100 hp
Sail plan	3-masted sail
Speed	6 knots (6.9 mph; 11 km/h)
Armament	12 guns

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 Dutch navy. The ship was used at the newly established Naval School of Nagasaki in order to build up knowledge of Western warship technology.

Kanrin Maru, as a screw-driven steam warship, 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 in Kinderdijk, the Netherlands (later known as L. Smit en Zoon). 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.^[1]