When a US diplomatic mission to Japan in 1852 stopped over in Galle
Sepia toned illustrations of temples in Karapitiya (left) and Talpe (above)
When an American expedition to Japan made landfall in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in 1853, they were by no means the first representatives of the newly founded nation to arrive in this country. By 1813, more than four decades earlier, members of the American Christian Mission sponsored by the American Board of Commissioner’s Foreign Missions had already made their way to Jaffna.
There are also earlier records of Boston whaling ships arriving in Ceylon’s territorial waters during the last decade of Dutch rule (1780-1796), making short stopovers in Galle, but these were recorded as unofficial visits.
By 1852, the US Government decided to dispatch a military expedition to Japan to coerce Japan to abandon its exclusion policy that had kept the world at bay for almost two centuries. The Japanese in the 19th century were ruled by a feudal military regime under the Tokugawa Shogunate which was the power behind a weak emperor.
In 1851 there were efforts to trade with Japan and in 1852, Admiral Mathew Calbraith Perry, then the highest-ranking officer in the U.S. Navy (Eastern Section) was chosen to launch an official expedition to establish commercial contacts and access supply ports to trade with Japan. After final talks in Washington with Secretary of State Charles M. Conrad and Navy Secretary John P. Kennedy, he was ready to sail.
Admiral Perry left Annapolis in November 6, 1852 and headed across the Atlantic on the steamer Mississippi. According to the strict rules of the US forces, the crew was drafted exclusively from the military but Perry had hand-picked two civilians Eliphalet M. Brown Jr, and William Heine to document the expedition.
Perry was well aware that the government insisted and the public expected from him a well-illustrated literary document of the expedition.
William Heine, 25, an artist and landscapist from Dresden was an obvious choice. Heine was an excellent illustrator, teacher of painting in Europe and later in the U.S. He was also an author, diplomat and consular aide in Central America. After he returned from Japan, he returned as an artist with the Prussian Far Eastern Expedition.
After he became a naturalized citizen of the U.S. on May 4, 1856, Heine enlisted in the army and rose to become a brigadier general during the Civil War. He was taken prisoner during the conflict. He also served as a member of the U.S. diplomatic corps. His memoir ‘With Perry to Japan’ was translated into English from its original German in 1856.
Heine served additionally as Admiral Perry’s natural history curator, collector of species and drew, painted and sketched a handsome portfolio of genre images as well as landscapes, portraits, and studies of plants, animals, fish and birds. He undertook to be a member of the team of surveyors and cartographers. He was the assistant to Brown as an extra daguerreotypist. His motto all throughout his life was, “I must bear the obligation to be active and do what I can for the common good.’
By the 1850s there were several competent daguerreotypists to select from and hence the choice of Eliphalet Brown for this expedition needs explanation.
Born in 1816 in Newburyport, Massachusetts, Brown’s knowledge and experience of the daguerreotype process was limited. Working as a lithographer, he supplied his engravings to the famous firm of engravers and lithographers Currier and Ives. His brother James was an experienced daguerreotypist and had previously taken portrait studies of Admiral Perry and his junior officers. His familiarity with Perry would have had some bearing on his brother being selected for this important post.
This was an ideal slot for Brown as he picked up much by way of producing illustrations for journals and reports. Over the next decade he worked as an artist doing various themes from portraiture, to marine historical subjects.
After much delay Admiral Perry embarked from Annapolis (then the headquarters of the Eastern Section of the U. S. Navy) on November 24, 1852, in a single steamship, the Mississippi, before regrouping with the rest of the fleet in Shanghai.
The Mississippi took the southern route to Japan, sailing around the Cape, South Africa. The records in the Shipping Intelligence for 1853 state that on March 11 the Mississippi had made landfall in Galle. Admiral Perry most likely stayed on board and did not disembark from the ship but sent his salutations to the administrators on shore as well as the Chief Priest of the temple at Galle.
During their visit to Galle, what impressed both Brown and Heine were the Buddhist temples in and around the vicinity of the town. We have interesting engravings showing the duo visiting Buddhist temples in Galle. Several of these were published as lithographs in this lap of the voyage. Almost all, executed by both Heine and Brown. But we are not certain whether these were based on the original daguerreotypes taken by Brown or Heine or were based on the sketches they executed at the different sites.
The technology to print images straight from daguerreotype images had not been invented and many illustrations that appeared between 1835-1860 in newspapers, journals, books and other publications were drawn by engravers from original daguerreotypes.
The sepia toned illustration titled Buddhist Temple, Ceylon shows the temple in Karapitiya. It is still in reasonably good condition. During my visit some years ago, the access stairway at the entrance flanked by two columns was slightly damaged and one of the columns flanking the entrance stairway had toppled.
In the illustration we see the figures of two foreigners. The one in front wearing a sombrero and carrying what seems like a gun could be identified as Eliphalet M. Brown and the person just behind him in a peak cap is William Heine, carrying a portfolio of drawings and other materials for sketching
The second engraving titled Buddhist Temple, near Point de Galle, Ceylon (uncoloured) shows the Temple at Talpe on the main road from Galle to Matara. Here the decorated masonry of the front gateway, shown in the illustration has been altered beyond recognition. Here too among the figures in the foreground is Heine wearing a peaked cap flanked by Eliphalet Brown wearing a black tunic and sombrero.
The drawing for this engraving was by Heine as can be seen on the left bottom on the edge of the illustration.
Perry’s report stated: The daguerreotypists Messers Brown and Draper, were settled on shore in a house outside the village of Tumai, and some of the embellishment of this volumes are illustrative of the results of their very useful labour.
In the same report there is an illustration near the Temple of Tumai, a portrait of a man operating a camera and it is most likely that it is Brown for it seems to match with the figures represented in the illustrations of temple landscapes of Galle.
The expedition to Japan was a great success and Brown is supposed to have even demonstrated the use of the new invention – the daguerreotype camera and offered it to the Japanese with other gifts such as a steam engine and telegraphic equipment.
While Perry was involved with diplomatic ties and signing of treaties, in March 1854, Brown managed to take several portraits of the ruling Japanese aristocracy. However it caused some controversy and a feudal order went out that both women and children should stay indoors and not be exposed to such ordeals.
Admiral Perry quite exhausted, both mentally and physically after the visit, left for Manila and then to Hong Kong. He transferred to a British Mail steamer that called in India and arrived in England travelling partly overland. By January 12, 1855, Perry reached New York to great acclaim that he had accomplished a great diplomatic feat. The Mississippi with Brown and Heine on board arrived in New York on April 12, 1855.
The report submitted to Congress in August 27, 1855 was published by January 1, 1856 and consisted of three volumes. The first had the text and accompanying lithographs and wood engravings. Unfortunately, the bulk of the material and others containing Brown’s daguerreotypes were destroyed in two fires, one at the printers and the other at the Smithsonian Institution. Some which were presented or even retained by the Japanese aristocracy though minuscule in number, are the only ones that have survived.
Following his retirement from the Navy around 1875, Eliphalet Brown seems to have given up his art and photography. He died on January 26, 1886.
Heine retired in 1871and settled in Dresden, his birthplace. He died in Lossnitsz, near Dresden on October 5, 1888.
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