Edo Bay, Japan.
Early August 1836.
The first people to see the Rivoli were not soldiers.
They were fishermen and merchants already out on the water before the heat of the day fully settled over the bay. Their vessels were small, built from wood, narrow in frame, and familiar to the people who lived along that coast. They moved with the rhythm of wind and current, their crews more concerned with catch, cargo, and weather than with the politics being discussed in Edo.
Then one of them looked up.
At first, he thought it was land.
A dark shape far out on the water, too large and too strange to fit the eye properly. It did not look like any Japanese vessel. It did not look like the Dutch ships that came through Dejima. It did not even look like the large foreign warships some had heard described in scattered reports from the south.
It looked wrong.
Too long.
Too low.
Too hard in its shape.
