Blackthorne proposes capturing the Black Ship

Blackthorne proposes capturing the Black Ship as a way to turn his maritime expertise into leverage against the Portuguese and, potentially, to help Toranaga build a modern navy. The proposal is more than a daring raid: it sets Blackthorne’s European rules of naval war against Toranaga’s insistence that Japan is not a theater for foreign conflict. Toranaga does not authorize an attack, but his replies leave an ambiguous boundary between Japanese policy and Blackthorne’s freedom at sea.

Circumstances and Opportunity

The proposal comes during a private discussion after the earthquake, when Blackthorne is trying to take advantage of the unusual access he has gained by saving Toranaga’s life that morning. Asked whom he would wish to fight, he answers at once: the Black Ship. He is gambling that his service has earned him enough standing to put forward a plan he has been developing in secret. Mariko is caught off guard; she laughs at the audacity, while Toranaga remains serious.

Blackthorne’s confidence rests on practical command of ships and routes, not simply on bravado. In the voyage to Anjiro, he had already observed how Rodrigues took a galley from the Izu coast out into open water, choosing a faster but riskier course across roughly two hundred miles to Cape Shinto. Later, as a frigate pursued the galley near the harbor mouth, Blackthorne assessed the wind, the available sea room, and the vessels’ different maneuvering limits. These experiences inform his conviction that a ship’s speed, course, and handling can decide whether a larger enemy can be engaged or escaped.

His expertise belongs to a world where navigation itself is a strategic resource. Charts are often too vague to make a voyage safe, and sailors have no reliable way to determine longitude. A rutter can compensate with accumulated observations: courses between ports and capes, soundings, currents, wind patterns, hazards, anchorages, and sources of water. Because the Portuguese and Spanish guard their overseas rutters as national secrets, control of navigational knowledge helps sustain their maritime advantage. Blackthorne’s proposal thus draws on skills and knowledge that the Portuguese would prefer to monopolize.

The Proposed Capture

Blackthorne first asks Toranaga for letters of marque, offering to do the rest and divide the Black Ship’s cargo, including silks and bullion. Toranaga’s response, conveyed through Mariko, is that attacking a friendly nation would be an unforgivable act and that the Portuguese are essential to Japan. He also challenges the scale of the plan: Blackthorne cannot take a vast vessel carrying nearly a thousand people with the handful of men he has. Blackthorne accepts the practical objection rather than abandoning the scheme.

He estimates that he would need eighty or ninety trained seamen and gunners, recruited from Portuguese ships at Nagasaki. He imagines finding French, English, German, or Dutch sailors among renegades and pressed men willing to enlist for immediate payment and a share of prize money. To reach them, he would need safe conduct to Nagasaki, protection, and money. He says he would not take the Erasmus there while dangerously undermanned; he would recruit first, return to Yedo, and put to sea with a full crew and arms.

His account of the attack depends on timing and the Erasmus’s performance. If the Black Ship were in Nagasaki, he would display battle flags and wait until it had completed trading and set out homeward. He would then let it leave port, pursue it a few leagues offshore, and rely on the Erasmus’s greater speed and cannon to bring it to submission. A prize crew could take the captured vessel back to Yedo. Blackthorne estimates that its cargo might include three to four hundred tons of gold bullion. When Mariko asks why the defeated captain would not scuttle his ship, he describes the European naval custom of surrender as a way to avoid unnecessary deaths. He does not disclose that he expects Rodrigues to be a particularly difficult opponent.

Objections and Conditions

Blackthorne adjusts the scale of his proposal as Toranaga probes it. In a hypothetical state of war, he says, two or three hundred disciplined fighters, a good crew, and the Erasmus could seize the Black Ship and drag it out to sea. He emphasizes that the action would make sense if the conflict were taking place in Europe. Toranaga draws the distinction sharply: Japan is the Land of the Gods, and there is no state of war between him and the Portuguese, nor will there be one. A legal right to attack an enemy elsewhere does not make Nagasaki or Japanese waters an acceptable battlefield.

The exchange also tests whether the Portuguese, their Jesuit allies, or Lord Harima might become hostile. Blackthorne argues that Nagasaki is effectively controlled by foreigners and that, under his own law, he may attack an enemy wherever he finds one. Toranaga’s answer is that this is not anywhere else; it is Japan. Blackthorne agrees that an attack there is unthinkable, but maintains that the same methods could be used if Lord Harima or the Jesuits became hostile. He presents the plan as preparation for a possible eventuality, not as a claim that Toranaga has already declared war.

Prize, Navy, and Unresolved Permission

Blackthorne asks whether, if he captured the Black Ship at sea and brought it into Yedo under the English flag, he could sell the vessel and its cargo according to local custom. Toranaga’s answer is conditional. Blackthorne then offers several possible dispositions: refit the prize in Yedo, transfer his share of the bullion to the Erasmus, sell the Black Ship back to the Portuguese, give it to Toranaga, or burn it, depending on Toranaga’s wishes. He proposes returning to England and coming back within a year with four warships as a gift from the Queen. He also suggests that a trusted Japanese counselor could accompany him as an ambassador to establish a treaty of friendship.

The offer links private profit to a larger political possibility. Toranaga has already said he wants a modern navy manned by his own people, but he cautions that two years would not be enough to achieve this at first. He also insists that the whole discussion remains an illusion: he is not at war with the Portuguese or Lord Harima. Outside Japanese waters, Blackthorne would be a foreigner acting with his own ship and crew; in Japan, he is a samurai. The distinction grants no present license to attack, yet it leaves Blackthorne’s external actions unresolved. The proposal ends not with an order or an agreement, but with a narrow and consequential uncertainty about where Toranaga’s authority ends and Blackthorne’s responsibility begins.