SS John Grafton was a steamship that was used in an unsuccessful attempt to smuggle large quantities of arms for the Finnish resistance to the Imperial Russian regime in 1905 during the Russo-Japanese War.

It was bought by Japanese army officer and intelligence agent Akashi Motojiro in 1905 to aid an armed uprising in Finland.

In London the ship was loaded with 15,560 Swiss Vetterli M/1869-71 rifles, 2.5 million rounds of ammunition for them (both bought in France),[1] 2,500 Webley Mk IV and WG revolvers and 3 tons of explosive gelatin; additionally the cargo seems to have included 200 small automatic pistols and 300 Mauser C96 pistols bought in Hamburg.

[2] According to the original plan, the weapons were to be transported via the Netherlands and Copenhagen to a meeting place in the Gulf of Finland, from where the journey would continue to Saint Petersburg.

After running into a few problems the route was changed, and the ship set course towards the Gulf of Bothnia and the town of Kemi, where part of the cargo was offloaded.

The weapons that had been offloaded started to spread out into the villages (where they amongst other things were used for moose hunting) and were later part of the armory of the White Guard when it founded in 1917.