Beniowski u wybrzeży Japonii

Abstract

Benyowsky at the Shores of Japan In this article I intended to clear some controversies which arose around Maurice Benyowsky’s sea route along the Eastern coast of Japan. Benyowsky took part In the Bar Confederation in Poland and was sentenced by the russian czarina Ketherine II into exile on the peninsula of Kamchatka. He escaped from there on a captured Russian ship „St. Peter and Paul” with 80 persons on board. Benyowsky initially directed Northward, visited the Bering Island, reached the Mechigmensky Bay In the region of Bering Strait, sailed along the Western Coast of Alaska reaching Eastern Aleutian Islands. From tere he sailed to the Southern Kurile Islands and then along the Eastern coast of Japan on his way to Formosa (Taiwan), China and finally to the Portuguese Makau. He had made several stops in Japan anchoring at different places which were sometimes very differently identified by the European and Japanese researchers. Author proposes his own identifications of five places in Japan and on Islands now belonging to Japan, which were visited by Benyowsky, including the Bonin Islands, Honshu, Shikoku, Tanegashima and Ryukyu Islands.