Note 106 — Chapter XLIV

Three accounts of this voyage have been published: one by Williams (“Chinese Repository,” Nov. and Dec. 1837); a second by Parker, London, 1838, and a third by King, New York, 1839. It is possible that outrages by whaling vessels, which had begun to frequent the seas of Japan in considerable numbers, might have somewhat increased the antipathy of the Japanese towards foreigners. Of transactions of that kind we should be little likely to hear, but that they did sometimes occur seems to be proved by a paragraph in the “Sidney Gazette” of February, 1842, warning mariners to be cautious how they landed on Japan, as a Japanese village on the east coast of the islands, somewhere near 43° north latitude, had been recently destroyed by the crew of the Lady Rowena, then in the harbor of Sidney, and whose captain openly boasted of the fact.