Normanton Incident
1886 CE.
Shown on the map at 33.471°, 135.862°.
The Normanton incident (ノルマントン号事件, Norumanton-gō jiken) was a series of events surrounding the sinking of the British merchantman Normanton of the coast of Japan's Wakayama Prefecture on 24 October 1886. Normanton, which had a mixed crew of Europeans and Asians along with 25 Japanese passengers onboard, was sailing from Yokohama to Kobe when it ran aground in bad weather and began sinking. The ship's British captain, John William Drake, escaped in Normanton's lifeboats along with his European crew members. None of the Asian crew or Japanese passengers survived the sinking, and three European sailors died of hypothermia while making their way back to the shore. As under existing Anglo-Japanese treaties Drake and his crew were subject to extraterritoriality, they were tried by the British consular court in Kobe, which fully exonerated them of wrongdoing. Public uproar in Japan led to the case to be tried by the British Court for Japan, which found Drake guilty of criminal negligence and sentenced him to three months of imprisonment.
Text from the Wikipedia article Normanton incident, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.