The port of Wonsan in the early 1900s / Robert Neff Collection

The General Sherman, an American merchant ship, sailed up the Taedong River in August 1866 — right up to the very gates of Pyongyang. Ostensibly, the ship’s mission was one of peace: to establish trade and open the Hermit Kingdom to the rest of the world. However, the expedition ended disastrously. The General Sherman was destroyed, its crew slaughtered and its anchor chain became a symbol of defiance against foreign intervention. To this day, North Korea cites the General Sherman incident as an example of early unwanted American adventurism on the Korean Peninsula.

The tale of the General Sherman and its fate is a well-known episode of early Korean-American history, but it might surprise you to know that there was another American ship named Sherman — a military transport vessel — that sailed in Korean waters at the end of the 19th century. Though not as infamous as its predecessor, the Sherman and its crew caused quite a stir among the populace on the East Coast.

In the spring of 1899, the Sherman arrived at Wonsan in modern-day North Korea, in hopes of replenishing its coal bunkers — unfortunately, the Russian navy had recently visited the port and purchased all the coal.

A street view of Wonsan in the early 1900s / Robert Neff Collection

A group of American soldiers, eager for the opportunity to stretch their legs after being cramped aboard ship for so long, went ashore and were soon surrounded by a large number of curious Korean men in winter clothing. Given that our narrator, an American infantry officer, was prone to exaggeration, I am a little skeptical of his claim of “several thousand men, dressed like clowns in a circus …were out on the beach to greet us.” Despite his frequent embellishments, his amusing account of this early encounter is rather interesting.

The Koreans “all seemed very tired, as though they had been working for years without a let up” and were smoking pipes that varied from a mere two........

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