The Moisshin, screw gunboat of 357 tons, is worthy of more attention, as she was the first ship ever built in Japan since the days of Adams. She was an enlarged edition of No. 1 Tébo, and exactly like her in appearance. Between the funnel and foremast a single Long Tom was carried. She was launched somewhere about the year 1865. Her construction was not, of course, purely Japanese—she was a craft upon which the Islanders practised and learnt construction with important material.
The Setsu, 935 tons, 8 guns, a sailing frigate, and the Chio-bin, a barque of 650 tons, originally used for trading purposes, also belong to this early period.
So also does a ship with more history, the Asama, a composite sailing-ship of 1445 tons and 14 guns. Her exact early history is shrouded in some mystery, but just previous to her entry into the Japanese fleet she was the property of a too-confiding pirate, who went into a Japanese harbour to refit, and had his ship taken possession of by the Japanese in consequence. The ship still exists as a gunnery hulk, and carries, or did till recently, eight 7-in. breech-loaders and four 4½-in. muzzle-loaders.
With these ships, built and building, Japan found herself engaged in that civil war of which the Mikasa, Asama, and other ships of to-day are the direct outcome. The officers had had some years of Western training, chiefly in Holland and Denmark. The accompanying [illustration], from a Japanese photograph, indicates the uniform of the period. There were in the Navy in those days two schools—the party of progress and those opposed to change—by no means necessarily identical with the same political parties. Indeed, of the two, the Jo-i seem to have chiefly availed themselves of the war-training to be secured from the foreigners whose expulsion was one of their political tenets. This, perhaps, was due in part or in great measure to the other factor in the dispute—the question as to whether the Emperor or the Shogun and his representatives should be ruler of the country. This became eventually the sole question.
THE MOISSHIN.