Wakamiya-maru
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The Wakamiya-maru was a Japanese cargo ship whose crew members became the first Japanese to circumnavigate the globe after their ship went off course after getting caught in a storm en route from Ishinomaki in the Tōhoku region of northern Japan to Edo (now Tokyo) in November 1793.
At the time, under the Tokugawa shogunate, Japan was pursuing a policy of isolation, and its borders were essentially closed. However, after sixteen days at sea, the Wakamiya-maru arrived at the island of Unalaska in the north Pacific. Then a Russian territory, the crew were rescued by Russians stationed on the island and transferred to Irkutsk. At the time, under Catherine the Great, Russia was seeking to initiate trade relations with Japan. However, Catherine the Great's death soon after the sailors' arrival in Irkutsk led to them spending seven years in the city, before being summoned to St. Petersburg shortly after Alexander I became Tsar.
