Twenty three years before Commodore Matthew Perry’s flotilla of black-bellied steam-powered ships arrived in Yokohama harbour. A solitary 60-foot, two-masted timber brigantine with a black-painted hull and crew of ten escaped convicts from the fledgling colony of Australia, arrived amongst a clutch of fishing vessels off the coast of Shikoku.

For the next 12 days the convict crew of the piratically seized colonial government transport the Cyprus brig from Van Diemen’s Land, present day Tasmania, would drift along the eastern seaboard of Shikoku, interacting with fisherman and samurai before eventually being forced back out to sea in a barrage of canon fire and musket shot in a highly orchestrated maritime repulse.

While Perry’s mission to Japan was motivated by a desire to open up the nation’s ports to American trading vessels, establish refuelling stations for Pacific crossings and to ensure the viability of the Japan Grounds whaling trade. The men aboard the Cyprus, with her sails "shred to pieces” from five months at sea, were driven to the Eastern coast of Japan in a desperate search of a safe harbour beyond the reach of the British Empire. 

On the run from the authorities since they seized the very vessel that was transporting them to the penal settlement on Macquarie Harbour, the prisoners, either out of bold-faced confidence or sheer desperation, decided to try their luck in a country known to be hostile to foreigners since the Tokugawa Shogunate introduced mandatory isolation in 1635.

Although the convicts didn’t know it at the time, their infraction into Japanese territory and subsequent maritime repulse by samurai 12 days later, is now recognised as first official contact between Australia and Japan.