In 2008 a diving survey by the Okinawa Prefectural Buried Cultural Properties Centre found the remains of a foreign ship that had sunk whilst navigating the waters of Yabiji. HMS Providence under the command of Captain William Broughton had been lost at sea in May of 1797 towards the Western end of Uggs Nu Susuhida (at a spot known by Ikema fishermen as Du-Nu-Nagatsubu). The fishermen of Ikema Island were aware of the existence of a sailing ship lying on the seabed of Yabiji before the survey. However the only record of the wreck was the testimony of Mr Koji Nagamine in his book “Exploration”. He had heard first- hand about the wreck from his Great Uncle Muneo Nagamine, who had been fishing in Yae’s tidal waters since he was a young man.
HMS Providence had been a three-masted Royal Navy vessel about 33 metres long with gross tonnage of 400 tons and equipped with 22 cannon on either side. The main purpose of its presence in the region was to chart the seas which were unknown to the British Navy, first sailing along the coast of the Korean Peninsula, then heading South along the coast of Hokkaido, past Okinawa and on down to Macau. After wintering there it sailed North again, and that was when the ship became a victim of the hidden reefs of Yabiji. The ship’s log describing the disaster is in the possession of the National maritime Museum in Greenwich, England. In it you can read of the efforts through the night to refloat the grounded ship, but water was pouring into the vessel and at dawn Captain Broughton decided to abandon the ship which was tilting fatally. He and all 115 crew transferred to a two-masted schooner that was accompanying HMS Providence and headed to Miyako Island where they stayed for eight days to procure water and food before setting sail on May 24th. Captain Boughton respectfully referred to the people of Miyako Island as “people who do not ask for anything in return”, supplying the necessary food and water and offering warm hospitality to him and his crew.
Before disaster struck HMS Providence had been involved in other commercial voyages and voyages of discovery, most notably under the command of Captain Bligh, who miraculously survived the famous “Mutiny on the Bounty” in 1789 that all children in England learn about. In 1791 Captain Bligh was appointed commander of HMS Providence and was charged with transporting bread tree saplings (a promising alternative source of food) from the South Pacific Islands (where the bread tree grows wild) to the West Indies. Following this successful mission the ship then explored the Northwestern parts of the Americas, including Vancouver island in 1795, but this time under the command of a new Captain, William Broughton. It was after this that the ship sailed across the Pacific Ocean to meet its untimely end in the waters of Yabiji.
Captain Broughton’s charting of the seas around the Okinawa archipelago was important work for the British Navy. Until his voyage in 1797 the Admiralty Charts of the period had only an approximate idea of where Okinawa (then the Ryukyu Kingdom) was positioned on the map, and indeed Europeans had had no contact with its people. In 1816 however two ships, HMS Alceste and HMS Lyra, did anchor off Okinawa’s main island, making use of the newly updated charts. They had been on a failed diplomatic mission to China, hoping to establish trading links with that country, and were exploring possible trading links with the Ryukyu Kingdom also. Those efforts also came to nothing, but on their return to England the Captains’ accounts of their contact with the Okinawan people were a publishing sensation, their books running into several editions, some of them illustrated. They had shared the same experience as Captain Broughton and found the Okinawans to be generous and helpful. The imagination of readers was captured by the glimpse the books offered of a sophisticated island people wholly unknown to Europeans. A trip to the semi-submerged coral reefs of Yabiji in the safe hands of a local fisherman from Ikema Island will help bring alive that era of hazardous exploration by British Naval vessels, and give an insight into the culture of the island which has lived in productive harmony with the sea for centuries.