How Australian convicts made first contact with Japan

Findlay’s great-great-great grandfather John Denner, a 22-year-old blacksmith from Bristol, was one of the youngest prisoners in Cyprus and was serving a life sentence in Van Diemen’s Land for stealing wine during the rebellion.

“It’s extraordinary to actually be here and know that these people are also descendants of this encounter,” Findlay says.

“Seeing John Denner come to life was the best part.”

A puppet show performed by local Tokushima artists re-enacted the encounter and expulsion of Cyprus for the descendants of those who participated in the encounter. At that time, the prisoners had offered the samurai an alcoholic beverage as a peace offering, but according to one manuscript, the samurai refused.

“As we all waved, they each took a drink, tapped them on the head, appeared to feel good, and passed it to the next one until they drank it all,” the sketch noted.

As a nod to changing times, Tasmanian Lark Hill whiskey boxes make the perfect gift for descendants of samurai, while the Findlays received a hand-woven Noren (traditional Japanese fabric) dyed in the indigo blue color typical of the Tokushima region.

“What was then a truly unexpected meeting and then forgotten has now become a symbol of curiosity, resilience and the connection, or reconnection, between our countries,” Australian Consul General in Osaka Margaret Bowen said at the event.

Three samurai families attended the event organized by Australian journalist Tim Stone and his Japanese partner Aya Hatano, who did research in Cyprus and tracked down some grandchildren, and among the relatives was 83-year-old Hayami Hiroyuki.

His ancestor, the high-ranking samurai Hayami Zenzaemon, led the military offensive to dislodge Cyprus from its last anchored position about 600 meters off the coast of the small island of Tebajima. He was acting under the orders of the isolationist edict of the ruling Shogunate (government); This edict required that all foreign ships be repelled.

“At that time, Japan was under sakoku [closed-country] “Politics is politics,” says Hayami, whose family has preserved fragile paper manuscripts for generations.

“In the following decades, in the closing days of the Edo period, Japan underwent great change. In our current era, it is unimaginable to think that we can now freely associate and interact with Australia; something our ancestors could never have foreseen.”

In total, there are eight manuscripts recording events from the samurai perspective; these reveal that the local people initially took pity on the prisoners and gave them rice and water. One of the manuscripts belonging to the Hirota family depicts an object that looks like a boomerang, which the samurai saw in the hands of the prisoners but was unable to identify and so drew it instead.

At the time, the rebellion in Cyprus was notorious throughout the British Empire; Ships were being sent throughout the region to find the convicts and bring them to trial. Many of them, including the known escapist Mercury Swallow, were eventually captured in China.

Swallow’s testimony at the trial about the encounter in Japan languished with no corroboration until 2017. Guard Australia has published the findings of Nick Russell, a British amateur historian based in Japan who began researching the maritime history of Tokushima after purchasing a holiday home in Tebajima.

Something as mundane as a Google search led Russell to digitized records of samurai manuscripts and translated them into English, uncovering in the process what is an almost definitive account of the passage of Cyprus to Japan.

Findlay says exactly what role Denner played in the rebellion is lost to history.

“He either played a very minor role, so he wasn’t part of it – his confession was that he was on the lower level of the boat – but other confessions and other documents say he was holding a rifle,” he says.

What is known is that Denner escaped the hangman’s noose, as did Swallow, whose deceptive testimony fascinated the London court but was not enough to prevent his being sent back to the colony.

The other two prisoners were not so lucky and became the last people to be executed for piracy in England. While another was hanged in Hobart, Denner spent the rest of his life in Tasmania; Here he finally gained his freedom, got married and had two daughters. The three men completely disappeared in China and were never heard from again.

For Stone, who grew up in Tasmania surrounded by criminal history, researching Cyprus has been an eight-year obsession since he learned of Russell’s findings. It is one that, with the help of government grants and a Churchill research grant, has taken him around the world, researching archives and family records, retracing Cyprus’ journey and searching for his final resting place on the seabed off Hong Kong.

“These were among the most wanted men in the world. Royal Navy missions were trying to find them but they couldn’t find them all,” Stone said.

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“I realized there were so many things left unexplained. Where are nine of the crew? Where is the ship itself? Those little mysteries are what keep me going.”

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