General Sherman

The General Sherman was an American merchant vessel which was destroyed and all its crew killed by Korean officials after sailing to Pyongyang without authorization in 1866.

The ship sailed up the Taedong River in the summer of 1866, making its way towards Pyongyang without authorization. After the ship got stuck on a sandbar while en route to the city, a skirmish erupted between the crew and a group of Koreans. The provincial governor, angered by the crew's incursion upon Korean territory, ordered the ship destroyed and all twenty-four of its crew killed. Korean envoys informed Beijing of the incident soon afterwards, but the American legation in China was left in the dark, and planned an armed mission to Korea to investigate what happened to the disappeared ship.

Officials of the Tokugawa shogunate and various domains took this as one of many incidents representing the potential threat of Western incursions.

References

• Robert Hellyer, Defining Engagement, Harvard University Press (2009), 231.