Christopher and Cosmas

Christopher and Cosmas were two Japanese men, only known by their Christian names, who are recorded to have travelled across the Pacific on a Spanish galleon in 1587, and were later forced to accompany the English navigator Thomas Cavendish to England, Brazil and the Southern Atlantic, where they disappeared with the sinking of his ship in 1592.

He writes that on 4 November 1587 the 27-year-old Cavendish, with two ships the Desire (120 tons) and the Content (60 tons) intercepted a Spanish ship, a Manila galleon named Santa Ana, off the coast of Baja California (at Bernabe Bay, some 20 miles east of Cabo San Lucas).

In particular, he selected two young Japanese men: On the 6th day of November following, we went into a harbour which is called by the Spaniards, Puerto Seguro.

Among the Spanish crew which was put ashore was the explorer Sebastián Vizcaíno, who would later play an essential role in the development of relations between New Spain and Japan.

The two Japanese accompanied him all along, and probably stayed in England for about 3 years, since they are subsequently mentioned during the next mission of Cavendish to the Southern Atlantic, not in Hakluyt's Voyages, but in the writings of Samuel Purchas ("The admirable adventures and strange fortunes of Master Antonie Knivet, which went with Master Thomas Candish in his second voyage to the South Sea.

As the Admiral was seated having diner, the two Japanese came to his cabin, and speaking in a loud voice so that everybody could hear them, explained that the Portuguese man sailing with them was a traitor, who had repeatedly proposed them to flee to Brazil.

And that he told them that, if God allowed the Admiral's desire to conquer the city of Santos, he would guide them to the southern seas, where they could get considerable reward in exchange for information.

(In 1804, the crew members of the Wakamiya-maru, who were castaways on Unalaska, Alaska, unintentionally accomplished this feat via Russian Empire with Nikolai Rezanov.)

In the end, following the first contacts with the West in 1543, the Japanese acquired the skills of transoceanic voyages and Western shipbuilding, before losing them with the closing of the country (sakoku) in 1640.

The next Japanese to reach England were likely the trio of Iwakichi, Kyukichi, and Otokichi in 1835, who had drifted across the Pacific in 1834 after being blown off course.