Service Record
Shōhei Maru took longer to complete than was anticipated, and was commissioned on December 12, 1854, by which time the Hōō Maru was completed by the Uraga bugyō in July 1854. In order to distinguish the vessel from foreign vessels of similar design, Shōhei Maru flew a Rising Sun Flag. Shōhei Maru was transferred to Edo in February 1855 and commissioned into the Tokugawa shogunate navy in August 1855. It was later assigned to the Nagasaki Naval Training Center as a training vessel.
Following the Boshin War of the Meiji Restoration, Shōhei Maru was seized by the new Meiji government, but was considered too obsolete for use by the fledgling Imperial Japanese Navy and was assigned to the Colonization Ministry together with the Kanrin Maru and was used as a transport for the development of the northern island of Hokkaidō. She was wrecked after she ran aground on a sandbar off what is now Kaminokuni, Hokkaidō (41°52′N 140°07′E / 41.867°N 140.117°E / 41.867; 140.117) after a storm on 2 March 1870.
Although Shōhei Maru represented a return to the building of ocean-going warships on the part of the Bakufu after two centuries of prohibition, Japan had built several western-style sail ships in the beginning of the 17th century, such as the galleon San Juan Bautista.
Read more about this topic: Japanese Warship Shohei Maru
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