Newsletter No. 477
News-Analysis
January 8, 2007

 

RAISE THE ERTUGRUL? A TURKISH INITIATIVE IN WAKAYAMA PREFECTURE

A story has appeared that is very near one of my own areas of academic specialization and interest. A private Turkish group held a press conference several days ago announcing their intention to find the remains of the Ottoman frigate Ertugrul, refloat it to the surface, and then exhibit it in a museum next to the Ertugrul Monument in Kushimoto Town, Wakayama Prefecture.

As some of you know, the Ertugrul was an Ottoman warship that came to Japan in 1890 on a mission of friendship. The leader of the mission was Osman Pasha, son-in-law of the Navy Minister, and his specific task was to deliver a letter of friendship from Sultan Abdulhamid II to the Meiji Emperor, which was itself a return gesture for the 1887 visit to Istanbul of Japanese Prince Akihito Komatsu. The diplomatic mission in Tokyo was a great success, but their luck soon ran out: first there was a cholera epidemic that killed some of the Ertugrul crew and delayed their departure, and then, just after they left the Kanto area, they ran into a fierce typhoon which smashed the ship upon the coast of Kashinosaki, Wakayama, and killed all but 69 of the crew members; many hundreds -- including Osman Pasha and all the senior officers -- died that evening.

There are many accounts of the Ertugrul tragedy, but most of them are filled with inaccuracies, and rely only on flawed secondary sources. From about 1999-2004, reconstructing the Ertugrul story and its implications was my main academic project. The most tangible result of those studies so far is an article that I wrote around 2002, but which is only being published now (due to many unspecified “problems” at Markus Weiner publishers). Although I have not received my own copy yet, my understanding is that it is now available for purchase:

Michael Penn, “East Meets East: An Ottoman Mission in Meiji Japan,” in Renee Worringer, ed., The Islamic Middle East and Japan: Perceptions, Aspirations, and the Birth of Intra-Asian Modernity, Princeton Papers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 14, January 2007.

The same volume also includes papers by Renee Worringer, Hideaki Sugita, Handan Nezir-Akmese, Thomas Eich, and Cemil Aydin that I am looking forward to reading carefully. Here is the publisher’s webpage:

http://markuswiener.com/catalog/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=637

Returning to the current news, the project to refloat the Ertugrul is being sponsored by the Institute of Nautical Archaeology in Bodrum, Yapi Kredi Retirement Partnership, and the Turkish Foundation for Nautical Archaeology. According to the information presented in the press conference, the first phase of the project is supposed to start today and continue until the 27th. The Turkish TV channel TRT-2 is expected to carry a report every day on its 5pm news program. The project has also set up a website, but only in Turkish language:

http://www.ertugrul.jp/

In the years since the Ertugrul tragedy, its memory has occasionally been revived as a symbol of Japan-Turkey friendship. The actual disaster occurred on September 16th, but it is usually commemorated each year on June 3rd, because the Emperor Hirohito once visited the monument on that day in 1929, and, presumably, because the weather is better in June than September.

I welcome these efforts to revive the memory of the Ertugrul, since it was in many ways the first truly significant chapter in direct relations between Japan and the Islamic world, with the possible exception of the 1880-1881 Masaharu Yoshida mission to Persia and Ottoman Mesopotamia.

On the other hand, I’ll be extremely surprised if anything resembling the “refloating” of the Ertugrul actually takes place. The ship was a decrepit wooden vessel in 1890, and was smashed to splinters in the typhoon that destroyed it. Professional divers led by Mankichi Masuda of Yokohama salvaged what they could in the months following the wreck. I have serious doubt that there’s much of anything left to be found after 116 years.

The whole project sounds to me a little a bit like Geraldo Rivera’s search for Al Capone’s secret vault. But perhaps this is a project whose success comes from the process, not the results.