Posted : 2021-05-24 08:52
Updated : 2021-05-24 08:52
A sketch of a steamship sailing through a storm in the East Sea in the late 1880s. Courtesy of Brother Anthony s collection
By Robert Neff
Throughout the day of April 10, 1860, the two steamships, Remi and Japanese, sailed along the Japanese coast but as darkness began to fall, the ships went their separate ways. Over the next two weeks, the voyage was relatively uneventful. On April 24, the steamship (Remi) passed Tsushima and entered into the strait dividing the Korean peninsula from Japan.
Captain Laen was fairly unfamiliar with this area ― most of his sailing was done along the coast of China ― and was relying heavily upon his charts, but the charts were incomplete and often inaccurate. Earlier that year, an editorial in the North China Herald (an English-language newspaper published in Shanghai) criticized the British government s inefficient use of the navy to survey the coast of northeastern Russian instead of h