Ships belonging to the Matsura clan of Japan fail to capture the Portuguese trading carrack in the Battle of Fukuda Bay, the first recorded naval battle between Japan and the West.
Matsura clan
The Matsura clan, also spelled Matsuura, was a medieval and early modern Japanese samurai family who ruled Hirado Domain in Hizen Province on the island of Kyushu. They started as a group of military families under the name Matsura-to. They were involved in Toyotomi Hideyoshi's Kyushu campaign and the Japanese invasions of Korea. Around 1590, they built their seat, Hirado Castle. In 1871, the Meiji Restoration dissolved Japan's feudal lords, and the clan's final daimyo, Matsura Akira, was put into the kazoku class.
Carrack
A carrack is a three- or four-masted ocean-going sailing ship that was developed in the 14th to 15th centuries in Europe, most notably in Portugal and Spain. Evolving from the single-masted cog, the carrack was first used for European trade from the Mediterranean to the Baltic and quickly found use with the newly found wealth of the trade between Europe and Africa and then the trans-Atlantic trade with the Americas. In their most advanced forms, they were used by the Portuguese and Spaniards for trade between Europe, Africa and Asia starting in the late 15th century, before being gradually superseded in the late 16th and early 17th centuries by the galleon.
Battle of Fukuda Bay
The Battle of Fukuda Bay in 1565 was the first recorded naval battle between Europeans and the Japanese. A flotilla of samurai under the daimyo Matsura Takanobu attacked two Portuguese trade vessels that had shunned Matsura's port in Hirado and had gone instead to trade at Fukuda, a port belonging to the rival Ōmura Sumitada. The engagement was part of a process of trial and error by the Portuguese traders to find a safe harbour for their carracks in Japan that eventually brought them to Nagasaki.