directly on to Edo, the nation's capital and to burn it to the ground if necessary, he was allowed to land at nearby Kurihama on July 14 and to deliver his letter. The visit resulted in the Convention of Kanagawa signed on March 31, 1854, which opened the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American vessels, ensured the safety of American castaways and established the position of an American consul in Japan. The Stirling expedition In early August 1853, Russian admiral Yevfimy Putyatin arrived at Nagasaki with a fleet of four vessels, just one month after the visit to Perry to Uraga in an attempt to force the opening of Japan. At the time, Russia was at war with Great Britain (the Crimean War), and alarmed at the possibility that Russia would obtain the upper hand in Japan, Royal Navy vice admiral Sir James Stirling, commander of the East Indies and China Station led a fleet of British warships to Nagasaki on September 7, 1854. Stirling's flagship was the sail frigate , accompanied by screw corvette and paddle sloops and . Stirling was not actually authorized to negotiate a treaty, and the signing of the convention came about due to a series of miscommunications. Stirling initially had two objectives: to find and attack the Russian fleet even if it were in Japanese waters, and to reaffirm Japan's neutrality in the conflict. To this end, he carried a copy of the British declaration of war on Russia, signed by Queen Victoria. However, the Tokugawa shogunate, already cautious of the British in light of the Opium War and recent negotiations with the Americans, assumed that the British were in Nagasaki to demand similar concessions. Stirling brought his own interpreter, Yamamoto Otokichi a Japanese castaway of limited education, and also relied on the assistance of Jan Hendrik Donker Curtius, the senior Dutch East Indies Company factor at Nagasaki. The Japanese were served by Nishi Kichibei, a Dutch language interpreter who had a predilection for altering the tone or content of what he was interpreting. Specifically, Sterling sought confirmation that Japanese ports would continue to be denied to Russian vessels, at least for the duration of the war, even if this meant that damaged British ships would also be denied permission to dock in Japan for repairs and re-provision. Assuming that Stirling was in Nagasaki to demand the same concessions as Perry, during discussions