PREVAILING BLUES
A blue and white drawing. Afloat on a paper sheet, a blue stained sea carries a flotilla of white forms. Boat-like, scattered among variegated hues of blue, they seem to be suspended in a gyre of motion, swept along by some purposeful current. These visually kinetic, jostling forms adrift are emblematic of artist Sue Pedley’s deeply layered projects. Arising out of her interest in connections to site and research into place and past, her practice has consistently been to gather up materiality, metaphor, and narrative from a place and recast them in a space of ambivalence. The Prevailing Gales exhibition is but one outcome of this approach, for which she has been described as ‘an artist of place’.1
‘The world is blue at its edges
The story of how a Tasmanian artist came to be on a residency in Tokushima Japan is an echo of a historical maritime incident. Whether by fate or chance, Pedley discovered that in the nineteenth century an intriguing sea voyage took place between the two shores—and it is a fabulous tale— of convicts-turned-pirates and cannon-wielding curious samurai. A contemporaneous record of the encounter was made in eight Edo-era inked manuscripts and drawings. With the benefit of a recent translation2 and other historical research,3 Pedley travelled to Japan to encounter the site and the manuscript directly. Poignantly, after almost two centuries, she was able to sit in contemplation of the sea from each coast. and in its depths.
Prevailing Gales is an artist’s retelling of the incident, a mixture of visual imagery, material artefacts, and speculative juxtapositions. The works developed for this exhibition reflect this, as materials were selected not only for their qualities, but for their legacies, associations and possibilities. The colour blue is deeper for understanding it as a pigment heavy with history.
Paper is more profoundly known when understood as plant fibres, its making perfected by people in place. Tar, copper, rope, sounds, and a weather app enter the story as well, thoughtfully incorporated into installations giving layers of meaning ranging from latent to overt. And the lines drawn, back and forth, from Recherche Bay to Teba Jima are waves, carrying within them a forceful coalescence of the personal, historical, and cultural.
For many years, I have been moved by the blue at the far edge of what can be seen,
As setting, the historical incident provides a dark undertow. During the Southern winter of 1829 a British colonial brig, the Cyprus, was sailing off Van Diemen’s Land,4 transporting a group of recidivist convicts from a harsh to reputedly the harshest penal station in the British Empire, Sarah Island. At Recherche Bay, the convicts seize an opportunity to take the Cyprus and forcibly disembark, but do not seriously harm, the military crew, passengers and other convicts.
A liberated and unlikely crew of 18 men, though unconfirmed reports suggest perhaps also an abducted Aboriginal woman, sail off with a fully supplied boat. First to New Zealand,5 then on to Tonga, missing Tahiti; they are down to a crew of 10 men when they are sighted off the coast of Shikoku Island. Under the Tokugawa Shogunate, a strict policy of maritime exclusion applied, and Japan was isolated and deeply suspicious of external influence, particularly British. The Cyprus arrived in the context of an 1825 expulsion edict in place for all foreign ships. The first encounter was brief and ended in repulse, by cannon. The convictpirates never made it to Japan.
that color of horizons,
In Pedley’s retelling, two blues tinge the story. Indigo was cultivated extensively in Awa province6 during the Edo era. As a tropical plant originally
derived from India, alongside cotton, indigo is a crop commodity loaded with a history of exploitation—slavery, colonialism and, in Japan, feudalism. Indigo as a textile dye, together with its traditional processes, came to be known as Japan blue, for its range of warm velvety blues steeped into fabric. Indigo inks were used in the manuscript illustrations depicting the Cyprus’ arrival but, as a plant dye, it is fugitive and has faded over time.
On the beaches of Teba Jima, the blue-grey sea that once brought in a foreign ship now washes plastics and other detritus ashore. For each day of her residency on the island Pedley collected and drew the outlines of this waste, setting the rubbish among stylised linear renditions of water, influenced by the designs in the manuscript. These flotsam and water drawings are drawn in two blues—indigo and Prussian blue—resulting in a melancholy reflection on the past, changes of blue, and so, of the ocean.
of remote mountain ranges, of anything far away.
Prussian or Berlin blue, the first synthetic blue pigment, was developed in Europe. It gives an intense and lightfast clear hue capable of tonal dilution to a wide gradation of moody blues. Ultimately it replaced indigo in Japanese aizuri-e woodblock printing, as it was permanent and more effective at producing gentle transparent blues of distance, as well as inky near-black blues for close detail. Prussian blue, named after a nation that no longer exists, is chemically derived from iron salts and is also the cyan of cyanotypes, or blueprints, with an associated legacy of use in technical and botanical drawing.
Using this process of printing with sunlight, Pedley has made photograms of her flotsam drawings, overlaying them variously with Japanese and Tasmanian nautical maps and other material objects. She describes the process as ‘letting unpredictable environmental factors such as wind,
clouds and water quality affect the outcome’. 7 As images, they have a crispness but also a certain haziness in the outlines. As prints they are a negative—like memories filtered and understood through perception. It is an appropriate process for telling this tale of cultural encounter, akin to seeing through another’s eyes—a reflection back through assumptions made about the other, as occurs across cultures.
The color of that distance is the colour of an emotion, Pedley was drawn to the detailed and lively quality of descriptions within the manuscripts archived at Tokushima Castle, particularly the freshly observed versions written and illustrated by samurai artist Makita Hamaguchi in1830. Before the Japanese manuscripts were discovered the story of the encounter was only partly known. There was an eventual trial in London, where evidence given of the attempted landing in Japan was met with disbelief.
This lost-then-found history and subsequent research lend Hamaguchi’s descriptions a poetic and lyrical quality. We understand the past from our vastly different contemporary perspective. Selecting aspects of Hamaguchi’s visual descriptions of the foreign ship, the appearance of the barbarians, as well as the closely observed rhythms of daily shipboard life, Pedley slips into another time to create a series of colourful painting/ collages. For it is in the unsaid passages, between the lines of Hamaguchi’s notations, among the tone of suspicion and alarmed posture apparent even in translation, do we find those charming glimpses. Interwoven in the story are small details of daily shipboard life, shared humanity, a little empathy, even admiration.
Tracing Wind #1 & #2 2025 Kozo paper, water colour, indigo dye 98cm x 66cm
Following page: Mapping Wind #4 2025 Cyanotype on paper 21cm x 15cm
the color of solitude and of desire,
They were working at different tasks: some painting the outside of the ship with tar, another going up the mast, others patching ripped sails, etc. They all stopped what they were doing… (and) started to wave us in. Moreover, as they appeared not to be hostile, we gradually sculled closer to get a better look.8
Disguised as fishermen, the samurai approach the Cyprus to ascertain its threat. Taking as impetus Hamaguchi’s observation of the hull being painted with tar, Pedley prepared sheets of Dó (bark) paper with bitumen, using its dark absorbency as ground for painted and pasted renditions of those furtively recorded details. The result is a series of poster-like paintings in which graphic imagery, kanji text, a vibrant colour palette, and whimsical placement evoke not only what was observed, but what those details say about the curious observer. The ship’s bow, shaped like a bracken sprout, chrysanthemum crests, a tender shaped like a koban coin,9 as well as the long-nosed, red-haired appearance of the European sailors, the revelation of a tattoo of a woman, a bag of rice secretly gifted by the villagers,10 all contribute to an extraordinary meeting, half remembered, half imagined, entirely wordless, dream-like.
the color of there seen from here,
In the Windy Drawings Pedley collapses many forms of distance and observes the voyage herself from afar, through the prevailing gales of her time. Using a mobile phone application, and known dates of the Cyprus’ voyage, she accessed wind conditions by locations daily. Every day between August 15th and January 7th, at 7am, she slowly crossed the Pacific Ocean—through Cloudy Bay and Chatham Islands (New Zealand), Tahiti, Friendly Island (Tonga), Marshall Islands, and Japan. The drawings are reproductions of the directional vortexes seen on her small screen, drawn into life as flicking brushstrokes
in Prussian blue on Kozu (mulberry) paper journals sourced from the Awagami Paper Factory in Tokushima. Re-imaged as cyanotypes, these works are a layering of material and metaphor, an artist’s journal of marks in materialities connecting to a sea journey made long after the event, assisted by contemporary technology.
the color of where you are not,
Sisal is another material recurring across the exhibition. A suspension of knotted sisal ropes and sisal leaves cast in plaster, set against an indigo blue partition wall, is to be installed in the Maritime Museum’s gallery, overlooking Constitution Dock, Hobart. As Pedley describes, this spatial intervention evokes the intricate tangle of ropes used in rigging, the nautical practice of measuring speed in knots, the sounding of ocean depths.
11 It also evokes shared objects and knowledge, as, while the two groups were unable to communicate well, they did share a common nautical language and appreciation.
and the color of where you can never go.
Pedley has worked with artist Gary Warner to create a soundscape for the exhibition.
…arrangements were made for standards to be raised, gongs and drums to be beaten, and conch horns to be sounded, and measures were taken to prevent the foreign ship from entering any port.12
Much like the visual effect of overlaying materials in the other visual works, layers of sound—the sea, conch shells, drums, cannons, and whistles—will punctuate, activate and underlay the exhibition space. In a way, the sounds represent the language of encounter, a wistful dialogue—on one side a request for sanctuary and on the other the reply of warning and repulse.
‘several times we heard the eerie sound of a whistle from the barbarian ship’.13
This blue is the light that got lost.’14
That blue and white drawing again. Seen from here, those trim, attenuated shapes I took for boats on a sea could as easily be sails filling against a blue sky, wind vanes pointing, seeds carried by wind, on currents—directional lines of desire, born of that doomed bid for freedom. I do eventually ask the artist about the forms, and it turns out that while they are cyanotypes capturing the shape of sisal leaves, a source of her materials, as a visual artist she is open to the enigma of interpretation. Held in blue, she says they also echo the form of Edo-era ships.
LISA PANG
November 2025
Millner, Dr. Jacqueline, “Sue Pedley is an artist of place. She forges links within and between places, to bring attention not only to the specific and perhaps overlooked qualities of the place we might be standing in, but also to the relationship of this place to other places, and hence to other histories, cultures and power stakes. Her sitespecific interventions are subtle and ephemeral, designed to evince reflective responses, poetic musings, a gentle form of embodied awareness.” www.suepedley.com.au
2 ‘Manuscripts relating to piratically seized Van Diemen’s Land brig Cyprus from Mugi, Awa Province (Tokushima) Japan’, Russell, N. (trans.) Ashiya JP: Nicholas Russell, 2022, www.piratesandsamurai.com
3 Including ABC Radio National The History Podcast ‘Through Samurai Eyes presented by Kirsti Melville and produced by Tim Stone and Aya Hatano with interviewees Nick Russell, Takashi Tokuno, Hamish Maxwell-Stuart, Warwick Hurst and others. Also Hurst, Warwick, ‘The Man Who Stole the Cyprus’, Dural AU: Rosenberg, 2008.
4 Van Diemen’s Land now known as Lutruwita / Tasmania, Australia.
5 New Zealand now known as Aotearoa / New Zealand.
6 Awa Province now known as Tokushima Prefecture.
7 Pedley, Sue, in discussions and correspondence with the writer, October 2025
8 ‘Volume 6: The Hamaguchi One Manuscript’ in Manuscripts relating to piratically seized Van Diemen’s Land brig Cyprus from Mugi, Awa Province (Tokushima) Japan, Op. Cit., 2022 at 15.
9 Ibid at 18.
10 Ibid. various at 24-6.
11 Pedley, Sue, Op. Cit.
12 Russell, Nicholas, Op. Cit at 2.
13 Ibid at 38.
14 Solnit, Rebecca, A Field Guide to Getting Lost New York USA: Books, 2017, at 29.
Detail 2026 Plaster, sisal rope 3m x 7m
SUE PEDLEY: ART AND DIPLOMACY
MATT COX
SUE PEDLEY: ART AND DIPLOMACY
The brig Cyprus probably still lies on the seabed, somewhere off the Pearl River Estuary, a wrecked testimony to the first cross-cultural engagement between Australia and Japan.1
Where does this exhibition start? Does it begin with the early 19th century exchange off the coast of Teba Jima between Australian convicts, fleeing captivity in Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania), and Japanese samurai? Or with the artist Sue Pedley, for this project is one of many in which Sue has found herself in the role of cultural diplomat, both researching and building connections between Australia and Asia.
In the late nineties Sue worked on a collaborative memorial to women in the American war in Vietnam for Canberra’s National Sculpture Forum, commencing her enduring work in Asia. Since then, beginning in 2005, she has undertaken commissioned projects in Japan, for the Echigo Tsumari Art Triennale and the Setouchi Triennale, where the aim was to revitalise rural communities through the arts.
In 2024 and 2025, Sue was back in Japan, to undertake an artist residency on Teba Jima and to exhibit the work arising from it in the 2025 Teba Jima Art Festival. Sue is an agent of cultural exchange – a diplomat – someone who fosters understanding and friendly relations.
Hamaguchi Makita’s 1830 manuscript documents Japanese interpretations of the Australian convicts anchored off the coast of Teba Jima. It makes sense of them via drawings of their boat, their utensils and their clothing. At the time, Japan was closed to foreigners and so the convicts were refused landing. However the documentation serves as a proxy landing; their bodies were carried in drawings to be examined, studied and discussed – giving the convicts resonance well beyond the year of their arrival. Held within the drawings, their visitation was prolonged and has
indeed been extended to the current day. In fact, it is their presence on the page that has made possible future arrivals and future conversations, including this exhibition.
Let’s think a little about the medium of art as a tool for translation and the expression of systems of knowledge. These drawings are of course more than documentation; they are a means for translating ideas and engendering exchange. Artists choose their own medium according to its proximity, availability or practicality, and sometimes the medium chooses them. Different mediums are used for different purposes – a sketch, a more detailed study, a conceptual work etc. Artists are also sometimes described as mediums, as being able to channel emotions and ideas, translate them and provide insight not found through other means. Historically artists have been, as we know from those who drew the Australian convicts, mediums for cross-cultural dialogue.
As might be expected, Hamaguchi Makita’s drawings, executed in ink on paper and reportedly made while observing the convicts from a boat pulled alongside the Cyprus, 2 have an economy of line conditioned by the occasion. Yet they still suggest a deep observational skill and dexterity in their fluidity and finesse. These are investigative drawings, observational even documentary, but are equally unable to hide the hand of the artist, someone well trained and aware of the importance of line and colour in exciting the viewer.
I am reminded of Holbein the Younger’s double portrait of The Ambassadors, painted some 200 years earlier. Hamaguchi’s eyes and hands must have been looking for ways to detail what he saw, searching for meaning in the strange forms, tools and clothing as a way of transmitting understanding to his commissioner. Holbein’s array of instruments selected to convey the attributional and allegorical qualities of the sitter,
remain open to interpretation across cultures and time.
In the desire to know the other, a certain irony is revealed. Henry Sussman suggests that, although the men in Holbein’s double portrait are equipped with the scientific instrumentation they assume is needed to discover, identify and categorise worlds unknown, their own identities are somewhat merged, as they both stare passively towards the viewer. In Sussman’s assessment, this serves to deny their individuality and presents them as like members of the same profession.3
It is not hard to imagine that the cultural encounter between Hamaguchi and the Cyprus’ motley crew resulted in a similar assessment - the single person standing in for an entire culture. So, how does an artist work to disentangle themself from this form of monolithic portrayal? One way is to recognise that the various objects depicted by both Hamaguchi, Holbein and – in a more contemporary setting – those depicted by Sue will change their meaning according to their viewer. They can and do hold multiple meanings.
Sue’s fascination with the sea and those who travel upon it is immediately apparent to anybody entering her studio. There they will find a personal archive of maritime images, flattened globes, sketches designed to aid boatbuilders, driftwood, plaster casts of boat-like forms, and ropes. On an adjacent wall, blue and white works on paper echo the cobalt blue and porcelain white wares that were famously traded along the maritime routes between Asia and Europe.
These floating images, known as cyanotypes, are produced by a direct and camera-less photographic technique that produces white images set against a sea of Prussian blue. Like all photographic processes, it is light, in this case sunlight, that brings the image into being as a direct trace of its movement across the surface. While we
understand the fictive qualities of photographic images, we cannot deny these their origins as records of chemistry and of the strength of the sun against them.
As Sue herself notes, the cyanotype process involves “letting unpredictable environmental factors such as wind, clouds and water quality affect the outcome of the work.” Like a sailor, eager to read the weather conditions, Sue’s pages are receptors for the prevailing gales.
On Teba Jima and at Recherche Bay, the location of the Cyprus mutiny, Sue collected ropes, ghost nets and debris washed up on the rocky shore by currents moving around the world. She arranged them on pages on the floor of her studio; there they waited in anticipation to be traced by light onto the paper. Once washed, the image oxidises and turns Prussian blue, the depth of colour dependent on the length of the exposure to light. It’s an obvious thing to comment on, but there is no denying that the blue made apparent through the cyanotype photographic process is deeply reminiscent of the ocean, just as the white drawings are evocative of the whitecaps that dance across its surface.
I am reminded again of the convict sailors who, having charted a pathway, remained exposed to the wind and waves and of how their journey is analogous to Sue’s own. There is an inherent unpredictably in her work that relies on harnessing what is made available through chance encounter, using what is washed up on the shore or across her desk. Even where there is clear intention, her art is never representational. Its role in translation and cross-cultural exchange is not instrumental but reflective.
Arriving at this exhibition, Sue has arranged her works as an open manuscript, an unfurled document. Unbound pages chart a history; line and rope cross over them but do not bind them to meaning. Instead the images wash against each other, gaining momentum to create new meaning.
1 Nick Russell, ‘The repulse of the Cyprus. Colonial convict pirates in 1830s Japan,’ Signals Australian National Maritime Museum, Sydney, 2019.
2 Nick Russell, ‘The repulse of the Cyprus. Colonial convict pirates in 1830s Japan’, Signals Australian National Maritime Museum, Sydney, 2019.
3 Sussman, Henry, ‘The aesthetic contract: statutes of art and intellectual work in modernity’, Stanford University Press, 1997, p. 26.
MATT COX
What the samurai saw:
Clockwise from top left:
What the samurai saw: dive off the stern
What the samurai saw: barbarians
What the samurai saw: pointed noses
What the samurai saw: Angeria
What the samurai saw:
Dó (bark) paper, graphite, paint, bitumen
x 50cm
Clockwise from top left:
What the samurai saw: tubular sleeves
What the samurai saw: secret rice
What the samurai saw: Dutch
What the samurai saw: twinkle light
What the samurai saw: pirates - crush
What the samurai saw: a pillow like hand
Dó (bark) paper, graphite, paint, bitumen 70cm x 50cm
70cm
英国船牟岐浦漂着事件
文政１２年１２月２０日（１８３０年１月１４日）、数日 前に土佐沖を漂っていたと思われる一艘の異国船が 阿波国海部郡の日和佐沖（現美波町）に姿を現した。
この地域の民政を担当する海部郡代の三間勝蔵は徳 島城下や関係の各方面に急使を派遣。海部郡在住の 徳島藩士、海部御鉄砲之者や郷鉄砲、猟師等を郡内 の各浦に張り付けるなど、瞬時にして防衛体制を整え た。当時は幕府の異国船打払令（無二念打払令）のも とにあったが、近い将来に起こるであろう異国船来航 に備えて徳島藩が入念な準備をすすめていたことがう かがわれる。一報が徳島城下にもたらされたのは同日 の夜。当時城下に滞在していたもう一人の海部郡代で ある山内忠大夫や藩の目付役、鉄砲足軽隊などが次 々と現地に急行した。この間に異国船は南下して牟岐 浦（現牟岐町）沖の出羽島付近に碇を下ろしている。
郡代手代としてこの事件に遭遇し、上司の命令で猟師 に化けて異国船に接近した浜口巻太は絵入りの記録 を残している。それによると、牟岐浦ではかねてからの 手はずに従って祭礼や浄瑠璃興業に使う村中の幟や 幔幕を茂みに集めて、さも軍勢が駐屯しているかのよ うな偽装をほどこしている。異国船との交渉は身振り 手振りで行われている。郡代は村役人などを使者とし て異国船に派遣し、水などを提供するかわりに即時の 出帆を要求。従わない場合は即座に砲撃すると大砲 の弾などを見せて強要した。これは当時の幕府の方針 にのっとた対応と言える。これに対して異国船の船長 は船の修理が終わるまでの猶予を乞うた。日本側の歓 心を買うためにであろうか、異国船側は女性が描かれ たガラス絵や酒を勧め、両者の間でたばこの交換など も行われている。また、異国船側は船長の礼装なども 見せている。何人かは船上に上がったと思われ、そこ で飼われていた愛玩用の黒斑の犬に目が行ったよう である。船員の中には胸に女性の入れ墨を彫った者も おり、先に彼らと接触した土佐からは「背丈は６尺程 度で髪はザンバラ、阿蘭陀絵のように美麗」との情報 ももたらされている。一方、最初から異国船に疑惑の 目を向けていた郡代は、交渉に派遣した者が同情心を いだいてくるのは「バテレンの妖術では」との疑念を強 めている。
２２日になって、徳島藩はついに異国船に対する陸上 と海上からの威嚇砲撃を開始した。
日和佐の郡代陣屋備え付けの「万（蛮）国船印図」によ って、この船が「諳厄利亜（アンゲリア）治所三国一治」 のものであることが判明。この「諳厄利亜」については「 よく知らないがオランダの近くだろうか」程度の認識 であった。暫くして当時日本近海に出没して問題とな っていたイギリスであることに気付き、徳島藩側は一 気に態度を硬化させた。
砲撃を受けた異国船は帆を上げて逃走を開始した が、外洋ではなく南方の浅川（現海陽町）方面へと向 かう気配を示した。当初は威嚇砲撃を心懸けていた徳 島藩側も直接船体を狙うようになり、何発かは命中し ている。船上で指揮を執っていた郡代は乗組員から、「 夜になると陸地方面から風が吹き、先ほど停泊してい た牟岐付近ならそれに乗って沖に出られる」という話 を聞き、その旨を身振り手振りで異国船に伝えた。了 解した異国船は船首を返して出羽島沖に戻り、陸上か ら吹いてきた風に乗って沖合へと姿を消していった。 以上が日本とオーストラリアの（当然ながら徳島県と タスマニア島の）ファーストコンタクトとなるキプロス 号漂着事件の、日本側から見た顛末である。
現地に派遣されていた手勢も２５日には撤収し、他の 史料によると２７・２８日には徳島城下へと凱旋してい る。また、日和佐の大浜海岸では郡代臨席の下で大砲 のデモンストレーション発射が行われ、そのうちの一 門の砲身が破裂するという後日談も残されている。
この一件は徳島藩政史上最大の異国船漂着事件で あるが、動員された人夫等への手当や諸々の諸経費 など藩にとって莫大な出費となった。藩はこれを「異国 船御手当御用」として領内全域の割賦にしようとした が、経費の回収は困難を極めている。
文責 徳野隆
※補足の説明です。ご参考にしていただければ幸いで す。
基本的には徳島県立文書館収蔵篠原家文書の中の 浜口巻太「異国船舶来話并図」をもとに牟岐浦異国船 漂着事件（キプロス号事件）の概要を書きました。巻 太の著作はいくつかの写本があり、徳島県立博物館 収蔵のものは別の標題となっています。この他に徳島 県立文書館の武藤家文書・元木家文書・山田家文書 などで補いました。
当時の日本で使われていた旧暦とグレゴリウス暦は 一ヶ月程度ずれます。本稿では主に旧暦を使用しまし た。
用語の補足解説です
海部御鉄砲之者：海部郡駐在の鉄砲足軽 郷鉄砲：民籍の予備銃卒
目付：仕置家老の補佐役で士卒の監察などを担当す る藩の重役
手代：役所で事務などを行う下級役人。身分は卒（足 軽等と同じ）
諳厄利亜（アンゲリア）治所三国一治 諳厄利亜（アンゲリア） イングランドを示すラテン語Angliaから来たもので、 当時の日本におけるイギリスの呼び方の一つ 治所三国一治 イングランドが支配している三国（イングランド・スコ ットランド・アイルランド）の連合王国のこと
Tracing Water #3, 2025 Kozo paper, water colour, indigo dye 98cm x 66cm
THE INCIDENT OF THE BRITISH SHIP BECOMING STRANDED AT MUGI COVE
On the 20th day of the 12th month of the year Bunsei 12 (January 14, 1830), a foreign ship, believed to have been drifting off the coast of Tosa Province for several days, appeared near the coast of Hiwasa Ura Cove in Kaifu County, Awa Province (present-day Minami Town). County Samurai Mima Katsuzō, who was responsible for civil administration in Kaifu, dispatched urgent messengers to Tokushima Castle Town and other relevant parties. He also immediately took defensive measures, positioning locally stationed Tokushima Domain samurai, Kaifu County musketeers, rural musketeers, hunters, and others at various ports throughout the county. The Shogunate’s policy at the time was to repel foreign ships (in accordance with the Edict to Repel Foreign Vessels), and Mima’s response reveals that Tokushima Domain’s preparations for such an incident had been meticulous. News reached Tokushima Castle Town that same night. Yamauchi Chūdayū, another county samurai of Kaifu, who had been staying in the castle town at the time, rushed to the scene along with the Tokushima Domain Inspector and musketeer soldiers. At around the same time, the foreign ship moved southward and dropped anchor near Tebajima Island off the coast of Mugi Ura Cove (present-day Mugi Town).
An illustrated account of the incident was made by Kaifu County samurai vassal Hamaguchi Makita, who was ordered to make an approach to the foreign ship disguised as a hunter/ fisherman. According to Hamaguchi’s account, in accordance with agreed-upon arrangements, the village’s banners and curtains used for festivals and puppet performances were strung up in the trees at Mugi Cove in order to create the false impression that a military force was stationed there. Negotiations with the foreign ship were conducted by means of physical gestures and hand signals. The county samurai dispatched village officials as envoys to the foreign vessel, offering water and other provisions in exchange
for the ship’s immediate departure. Displaying cannonballs, they threatened to fire on the ship if it did not comply immediately. Their actions can be considered consistent with the Shogunate’s policy at the time. In response, the foreign ship’s captain requested a delay until repairs could be made to the ship. Perhaps to win favour with the Japanese side, those aboard the foreign ship offered the Japanese a picture of a woman painted on glass as well as alcohol. Tobacco was also exchanged. The foreign ship also showed off its captain’s ceremonial uniform and other things. It is believed that several Japanese boarded the ship, where their attention was drawn to a black-spotted pet dog kept onboard. Among the crew were men with tattoos of women on their chests. Tosa Domain, which had made contact with the ship earlier, reported the crew were “roughly six shaku tall, had dishevelled hair and were beautiful like Dutch paintings.” Meanwhile, the county samurai, who were suspicious of the foreign ship from the outset, grew increasingly convinced that their envoys’ tendency to sympathise with the crew must be the result of “Christian sorcery.”
On the 22nd day of the 12th month (January 16), the Tokushima Domain commenced firing warning shots with cannons against the foreign ship from both land and sea. Using the “Bampakuzue” (Illustrated Map of Barbarian Nations) kept at the Hiwasa Garrison, it was determined that the ship belonged to “Anglia three nations under one administration.” They had little understanding “Angelia,” believing that it was probably near Holland. Shortly thereafter, they realized it was Britain, whose ships had been causing problems by appearing in Japanese coastal waters at the time. The Tokushima Domain immediately hardened its stance.
Under fire, the foreign ship hoisted its sails and began its escape, but instead of heading out to sea, it appeared to head southward toward Asakawa (present-day Kaiyo Town). The Tokushima Domain
forces, who had initially fired only warning shots, now targeted the hull directly, landing several hits. The county samurai commanding operations at sea heard from crew members that “at night, winds blow from the land, and if the ship went near Mugi where they were anchored earlier, they could ride that wind out to sea.” He conveyed this information to the foreign vessel using gestures and hand signals. Understanding the message, the foreign ship turned around and returned to the waters off Tebajima Island. It the rode that offshore wind and vanished out to sea. This concludes the Japanese account of the incident of the British Ship becoming stranded at Mugi Cove, which constituted the first contact between Japan and Australia (and of course between Tokushima Prefecture and Tasmania).
The forces dispatched to the site also withdrew by the 25th day of the 12th month (January, 19), and according to other historical records, they returned triumphantly to Tokushima Castle Town on the 27th and 28th. Furthermore, at Ohama Beach in Hiwasa, a cannon demonstration firing was conducted in the presence of the County Governor, and a subsequent account records that the barrel of one of the cannons burst.
This was the most significant incident of a foreign ship stranding in Tokushima Domain’s history, but it resulted in enormous cost to the domain, including allowances for the workers mobilized and other expenses. The domain attempted to reconcile this expenditure through a domain-wide instalment plan known as the “Official Foreign Ship Allowance,” but it proved extremely difficult.
TAKASHI TOKUNO
English translation by Edan Corkill
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR.
This overview of the Incident of the British Ship Becoming Stranded at Mugi Cove (The Cyprus Incident) is primarily based on Hamaguchi Makita’s “Illustrated Account of the Arrival of a Foreign Ship” from the Shinohara Family Documents held at the Tokushima Prefectural Archives. Several copies of Makita’s work exist; the copy held by the Tokushima Prefectural Museum has a different title. I supplemented this source with materials from the Muto Family Documents, Motoki Family Documents, and Yamada Family Documents, all of which are held by the Tokushima Prefectural Archives.
The old calendar used in Japan at the time differs by about one month from the Gregorian calendar. This paper primarily uses the old calendar.
SUPPLEMENTARY EXPLANATIONS OF TERMS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR
海部御鉄砲之者 (Kaifu goteppō no mono): Translated as “Kaifu County musketeer”. A musketeer foot soldier stationed in Kaifu County.
郷鉄砲 (Gō teppō): Translated as “rural musketeers”. Reserve musketeers on the civilian register.
目付 (Metsuke): Translated as “Inspector”. A senior domain official who assisted a chief retainer and was responsible for supervising and disciplining soldiers.
手代 (Tedai): Translated as “vassal”. A lowerranking official who handled administrative duties.
諳厄利亜（アンゲリア）治所三国一治 (Angeria chisho sangoku ichiji): Translated as “Anglia—three nations under one administration”. “Angeria” is derived from the Latin “Anglia” for England, one of the names used in Japan at the time for Britain. “Three nations under one administration” refers to the three kingdoms (England, Scotland, Ireland) ruled by England.
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: In translating the above text, reference was made to “Manuscripts relating to the January 1830 samurai repulse of the piratically seized Van Diemen’s Land colonial brig Cyprus from Mugi, Awa Province (Tokushima), Japan,” published by Nicholas Russell, Ashiya, Japan (2022). https://piratesandsamurai.com/. The names of people who lived prior to the Meiji Restoration of 1868 are rendered following the East Asian convention of family name followed by given name. The names of people who lived after that time are rendered first name followed by family name.
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