Frank Toovey Lake (1849–1868) died while serving in Japan with the British Royal Navy. After his death at the age of 19, he was interred on the island of Sanuki Hiroshima in the Seto Inland Sea. Since his burial – and until the present day – the islanders have steadfastly maintained the grave. This led to admiration among the late 19th-century British community in Japan including prominent members such as the British ambassador Sir Ernest Satow, and a number of newspaper articles appeared around the world in 1899 recounting the story and praising the conscientiousness of the local people. Since then the grave's story has continued to feature in the world's media, and continues to be celebrated in Japan as a demonstration of the historic relationship between the two countries. Lake's story also involves Richard Henry Brunton and Thomas B Glover as well as the aforementioned Ernest Satow, all of whom had important roles in Japan's modernisation during the Meiji era. In 2018, celebrations to mark the 150 anniversary of his death took place around his grave.
Early life
Frank Toovey Lake was born into a professional family in 1849. His father was a civil engineer involved with the construction of the Grand Junction Canal and his mother's family were mill-owners in Kings Langley, Hertfordshire, England.Who was Who in Kings Langley Parish Church. Published by Kings Langley Local History and Museum Society. 2012. He was the middle son of three siblings all of whom were raised in Kings Langley. When the three children were still young, their mother died of cholera at the age of 29 in 1854; their father died ten years later of tuberculosis and both were buried in the graveyard of All Saints, Kings Langley.Monuments in Old Churchyard of All Saints Parish Church published 1996. Available in Kings Langley public library.
Frank and his older brother were educated at St Albans School - also known then as King Edward VI Grammar School. Both were boarders,1861 UK Census. Available to view at the National Archives, Kew, London, UK or on line at Ancestry.com Lake left school at the age of fourteen and entered the Royal Navy as a Naval Cadet, joining HMS Britannia to begin his officer training.Frank Toovey Lake’s Naval Record. (Source: National Archives. Kew. London.) In order to gain entry to the Royal Navy he needed to pass an entrance exam taken at the Royal Naval College, Portsmouth. This he took in April 1864 and was awarded a Second Class Cadetship along with 48 First Class entrants and 11 further Second Class entrants. They all joined HMS Britannia. A year later he took a second exam, passed and was able to join a sea-going ship as a midshipman where he continued his training.
Naval career
Lake's naval record shows that the first ship he joined was HMS Argus – at that time stationed in Hong Kong - which he reached after four months sailing from England. Argus was a wooden hulled paddle-sloop, a fighting vessel with six cannon and a complement of 175 and, after sailing from Hong Kong with Lake on board, she spent most of her time in Japanese waters(Source: HMS Argus Muster book. ADM 38/7552. National Archives, Kew, London.)
Eighteen months later in 1867, Lake transferred to HMS Manilla stationed in Shanghai. She remained in Chinese waters for a number of months before sailing east to Japan. (Manilla was originally a merchant vessel, a three-masted, steam powered schooner, bought by the Royal Navy in Shanghai in 1866, and purchased because the Navy required a small vessel that could be used for a variety of duties including acting as a store ship and carrying mail to ships.)
In November 1868, HMS Manilla was assigned duties to help Richard Henry Brunton survey potential sites for the erection of lighthouses around Japan's coastline.Source: Muster Book 1862–1869 ADM 38/8511. National Archives, Kew, London. Brunton, along with his assistant Arthur W Blundell and a party of Japanese officials, embarked at Yokohama and then sailed south with a list of fourteen sites to visit.
The island of Sanuki Hiroshima was one of the sites on Brunton's list. They reached here on the morning of Sunday 20 December. Prayers were said and then the ‘Engineers Party’ disembarked to start their survey.
Death
At 2.5pm, the Ships Log records ‘Departed this life, Frank Toovey Lake, Navigating Midshipman.’
No explanation was written in the Log or Muster book as to the reason for his death. However, it is known Lake's death was sudden and unexpected as, in his memoirs Schoolmaster to an Empire published many years later, Brunton wrote, "Eventually we reached [Sanuki] Hiroshima. Here an incident occurred which is worth narrating, as showing another, but this time a most pleasing and praiseworthy phase of Japanese character. One of the midshipmen on the Manilla, a lad of nineteen, died quite suddenly while the vessel was at anchor."Schoolmaster to an Empire. R Henry Brunton. Edited and Annotated by Edward R Beauchamp. Greenwood Press. Westport CT. First published in 1991.
(However, in a death notice printed in The London and China Telegraph in March 1869, it says he died after a short illness. This indicates that perhaps his death was the result of cholera, a common and often sudden cause of death among sailors.)
The next day, Lake was buried on Sanuki Hiroshima in the village of Enoura. The ship's log records, ‘9.30 Officers and Ships Company landed to inter the remains of the late Mr Lake, Navigating Midshipman.’
Brunton described the funeral in his memoirs, 'He was buried on the shore of a beautiful bay, the whole ship's crew accompanying the coffin. The officers, fellow countrymen of the dead youth, stood in a group at a respectful distance, while the ceremony was proceeding. When it was over they approached, and the Tokio officer made a sympathetic little speech. He finished it by saying that in Japan it was the custom to present flowers to the dead, but as there were none in the locality, he asked permission to place a headstone at the grave, and explained that he had written to his government asking that orders be given to have the tomb carefully preserved and taken care of by the local authorities. Immediately after the funeral ceremony was over, a very pretty sight was presented by quite a number of aged men and women approaching with shrubs and twigs, which they reverently laid on the grave. These proceedings at Hiroshima considerably enhanced the European's opinion of Japanese character, so far at least as kindliness of disposition is concerned.'
After the funeral party returned to the Manilla at 10.40, a volley of blank cartridges was fired, the anchor weighed and the Manilla sailed towards Nagasaki. (All this noted in HMS Manilla'''s logbook.)
Grave
The story behind the grave was passed on by the villagers over the years and, eventually a sign was erected next to the grave recounted that story. Written in Japanese, an English translation records, ‘Here lies the body of the British Officer Lake [in Japanese it is written as Re-ki], a surveying officer who died in 1866 when his ship, HMS Sylvia was sailing on the Seto Nai Kai Sea. His ship moored off Hiroshima, the nearest island and they buried his body in a remote place on the western edge of Enoura village. After erecting a cross, they left. Then in 1868 a wealthy villager, called Okara Haju felt pity for the spirit of the officer, gave him a Japanese name Hasegawa Saboro Bei and registered his death at the local temple. He then erected this tombstone in commemoration.’Extremes: Contradictions in Contemporary Japan. G M Thomas. Pages 19-22. Published 2004 by Kaichan Europe.
[These facts were incorrect in terms of date and ship for reasons that will be explained below.]
Brunton recorded in his memoirs that in 1872 he revisited the grave and found it being well tended by the villagers. (At the time, one of his lighthouses was under construction on the nearby island of Nabeshima.)
Captain Henry St John commanded the British survey vessel HMS Sylvia in the late 1860s and through the 1870s. They spent an extensive period in Japanese waters and made several visits to Sanuki Hiroshima. In 1880, St John published an account of his life at sea around China, Japan and Korea, and wrote of visiting Lake's grave...'on and off for years I visited the spot and always found the simple grave thus watched and cared for.'Page 149, Notes and Sketches from the Wild Coasts of Nipon. Captain Henry St John, Published in Edinburgh, 1880, D Douglas.
In 1876, while making his final visit to Sanuki Hiroshima, Captain Henry St John wrote a letter to the Mayor of Hiroshima: 'Sir – I beg to thank you very much for the goodness and kindness of yourself and the inhabitants of Hiroshima shewn in taking care and tending the grave of the English naval officer, who was buried here in 1866. I am sir H C St John.' (This note is available for view in the Seto Inland Sea Folk History Museum near Takamatsu, Kagawa Prefecture.)
This explains the discrepancy with the date of death and ship's name in the sign alongside the grave, (and a discrepancy found in many other accounts until recently: clearly it was assumed that Lake had served with St John and, for reasons unknown, St John had written the wrong date of death).
Jumping forward to 1897, an American sailor Captain George W Conner became aware of the grave. Connor was employed by the shipping company Nippon Yusen Kaisha,Advertisements from the Mid Day Herald Singapore 1895 with the name of George W Connor as captain of Saikio Maru and he often sailed through the Inland Sea. He informed Thomas Blake Glover who in turn brought it to the notice of John Carey Hall, the British Consul in KobeFrom a report in the Nagasaki Press, 10 April 1899. Hall then informed Ernest Satow, the British ambassador in Tokyo, who wrote to Viscount Aoki Shuzo, Minister of Foreign Affairs, of his gratitude that the grave was being tended by the islandersSource: JACAR www.jacar.go.jp/english/).
The Grave – First newspaper reports
In 1899, extensive articles about the grave and the story behind it appeared in English language Japanese newspapers such as the Japan Mail, the Kobe Weekly Chronicle, and the Nagasaki Press before appearing in newspapers worldwide including the London Times and The Sketch in the UK, and the Colonist in New Zealand. One of the stories in the Kobe Weekly Chronicle reported:
'While coming up from Miyajima in the Snowflake, Mr [Alexander Cameron] Sim and Mr [Mark] Baggallay visited Inoura, a village situated on a small island in the Inland Sea named Hiroshima of Kagawa Prefecture (which must not be confused with the well-known Hiroshima near Ujian) where there exists the tomb of a British officer who was buried there more than thirty years ago. On casting anchor at Inoura, which is situated on the shores of a beautiful land-locked bay, an old fisherman in a sampan close by was asked if he knew of a foreigner's grave in the neighbourhood. He replied in the affirmative and at once took Messrs Sim and Baggallay shore and conducted them to the spot which is situated somewhat apart from the Japanese cemetery, and is evidently very carefully tended.'3rd May, the Kobe Weekly Chronicle and copied in Harold Williamson's archives.
The Times 7 JulySource: Online Times digital archive.