While anchored at Yokohama, one Chinese coolie aboard escaped by jumping overboard and swimming to the nearby British warship HMS Iron Duke.
The captain of the María Luz, Ricardo Herrera, was summoned by Japanese authorities and strongly admonished to treat the escapee with leniency and to take better care of his indentured charges.
[1] However, another Chinese indentured labourer soon escaped, and word reached acting British consul Robert Grant Watson that the first escapee had been brutally treated by the Peruvian captain on his return to the ship.
Together with a boarding party of British Marines, Watson personally inspected the vessel, and found that the rumor was true, and that the Chinese passengers were being treated in conditions similar to slavery.
Kanagawa governor Mutsu Munemitsu was strongly opposed to any intervention which might damage Japanese relations with the western nations; however, Justice Minister Etō Shimpei felt that, for humanitarian reasons, the issue could not be ignored.
[2] Soejima took steps to prevent the María Luz from leaving port, and after reviewing the ship's records and interviewing the officers, found that its cargo of illiterate indentured laborers had been deceived in Macao into signing contracts, the contents of which they could not read or understand, and were being confined against their will under inhumane conditions.