Dutch Ship Liefde Reaches Japan

April 19, 1600

The storm-battered Dutch vessel Liefde drifted into Bungo Bay with twenty-four survivors of a fleet of five. Among them was the English pilot William Adams, whom Tokugawa Ieyasu would keep as advisor, samurai, and shipwright. Japan's window to northern Europe opened by accident, and Adams became the first Englishman to set foot on Japanese soil.