and displacement of 370 tons. Of wooden construction, she was depicted in contemporary artwork as being armed with five cannon on each beam. Her sails had black bands, characteristic of Tokugawa naval vessels. She was depicted in an 1855 print as flying the rising sun flag. The new ship was apparently built using manuals obtained from the Netherlands via the trading outpost of Dejima, and occasional observations of foreign vessels roaming the waters off Japan. Nakahama Manjirō may have contributed to its design from his personal experiences, but this is uncertain. Service record 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 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 () after a storm on 2 March 1870. References External links Shimadzu Nariakira designed the Hinomaru, Japan's national flag Notes 1853 ships Naval ships of Japan Ships built in Japan Three-masted ships Ships of the Tokugawa Navy Shipwrecks in the Sea of Japan Maritime incidents in March 1870