Sakai Incident
On the 8 March 1868, a skiff sent to Sakai was attacked by samurai retainers of the daimyo of Tosa; 11 sailors and Midshipman Guillou were killed (a monument in Kobe is now erected to their memory). The captain Dupetit Thouars protested so strongly that the culprits were arrested, and 20 of them were sentenced to death by seppuku. However, the execution style was so shocking to the French that after 11 were carried out, the French captain requested grace for the survivors. This allowed the French and Japanese parties to reconcile, and is now known as the "Sakai incident", or Sakai Jiken (堺事件).
On the 16 April 1868, the Dupleix was the first Western ship to salute the Emperor at Fort Tempozan.
In October of the same year, the Dupleix was sent to Edo. She rescued the British corvette HMS Rattler, which was shipwrecked at Romanzoff Bay, in La Perouse Strait.
Read more about this topic: French Corvette Dupleix (1861)
Famous quotes containing the word incident:
“I teazed him with fanciful apprehensions of unhappiness. A moth having fluttered round the candle, and burnt itself, he laid hold of this little incident to admonish me; saying, with a sly look, and in a solemn but quiet tone, “That creature was its own tormentor, and I believe its name was BOSWELL.””
—James Boswell (1740–1795)