Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 July 1895 — Japan's First Modern Warship. [ARTICLE]

Japan's First Modern Warship.

A contemporary notes that the first armed ship of modern design owned by the Japanese was an old American vessel, and Japan’s first Admiral was an American officer. The ship was the ram Stonewall, which the United States captured from the Confederates in 1865 at Havana, and which was sold to Japan in 1868, being taken to Yokohama via the Straits of Magellan by Captain George Brown, of the United States Navy. The first Japanese Admiral was Walter Grinnell, appointed soon after that at a salary of $14,000 per year for three years, while he was an ensign in the United States Navy stationed at Hiogo. To this we may add that the old ram lay for many years in Yokosuka harbor in a dismantled and greatly dilapidated state, till at length, about the year 1889, she was taken up to Yokohama, beached on the flats off the fort at Kanagwu and there broken up.