March, 1856
Sea of Japan
The Captain of the HMS George V was looking forward to his next command. Too many of the Royal Navy ships remained ships of sail, virtually useless in his mind against a modern steam ship. Plus sailing ships were resource intensive. It took large numbers of skilled sailors to man a sailing ship from London to Nippon, 400 men toiling for 7 months (and that was a quick journey!). A stream-ship of equivalent size would take less than 1/4 that time and barely 2/3rds the crew, many of which would not need to be sailing professionals as certain steamship positions could be done by any idiot impressed at port (or inland for that matter).
The history of the Royal Navy was the history of the struggle for qualified manpower. If the Navy were to convert entirely to steam, then effectiveness would go up exponentially: more ships as they required fewer men, tasks such as sailing to Asia would take a fraction of the time and therefore require fewer ships or the navy could be ever more useful, ever present on the seas in a way impossible before.
Still, it was a fine time to be in the navy. Britain's ships were always superior to French. Russia and America were gaining but neither had a great naval tradition. Spain and the Dutch Republic were long dead as powers, REAL powers anyway. The nation that controlled the sea controlled the world. France no longer stood upon Europe's throat. Even the Spanish and Austrians didn't fear them anymore. Britain could and would yet rise higher. If anything, the sailor could not understand why France and Russia were being given such liberties in Indochina and China.
Well, he wasn't a politician.
For the past few weeks, the sailing ship had patrolled about the northern end of Honshu. The Captain was not worried. The handful of steam ships the Yamato possessed had been seized or sunk long ago. The Asiatics had no ships capable of threatening the George V.
Thus it was to the Captain's shock that he witnessed a large number of Russian ships approaching, a mix of warships and freightors. Most passed by but one small frigate sidled up alongside, their flags signifying a request for parley. The Russian Captain rowed aboard in a longboat and brought a bottle of that god-awful potato alcohol (which the Briton took politely though he intended on pouring it over the side the moment the Russians were out of sight. Only that hideous rice wine the Yamato made was worse).
The Russian haltingly inquired as to the state of the war with the Yamato. Uncertain if he was to pass on such information, he merely stated it was going well. This was largely true as reportedly most of Honshu had fallen to the British (well, the Shogun, nominally but the Captain suspected no one on Honshu believed that was true anymore).
The Russian departed with a similar vague answer of his destination being the "northern islands".
Only later would the "northern islands" mean Hokkaido, the northern island claimed by the Emperor of Nippon. Lightly populated with a native people that were only now being demographically overrun by Yamato, Hokkaido had been the domain of a noble serving the Emperor for decades, maybe longer. Britain had not gotten around to invading it and were not happy to see the Russians seizing control of what they considered their rightful (by right of conquest) territory. The Russians stated that they had their own claim to Hokkaido as they did to Sakhalin.
Given that the Russians were granted vast swathes of China to "establish influence", the use of resources on the cold, lightly populated island with no discernible resources seemed odd to many French and British observers. But the Czar had seen the huge gains made by the British, French and Americans in southeast Asia and the Pacific over the years and sought to protect their southern flank and ensure control of ports in the northern Atlantic.
Protests were made by the British, retorts made by the Russians. In the end, the British did not press their luck, not with the rebellion in India, the ongoing conquest of Nippon and the expansion of their "influence" in China all continuing. Besides, France's aggressive reentry into colonialism was making many foreign ministry officials in London nervous and Britain did not desire to alienate yet another power. Their relations with France were always wary, any hopes of some form of alliance with America had been rejected for decades.
Sometimes, keeping any form of peace was worth a bit of sacrifice.
Northern Honshu
The Emperor's Court "Advisors" (really his handlers) had been forced to "advise" the Emperor to retreat north again. More and more nobles were quietly seeking peace with the onrushing British dominated Shogun forces. It was now obvious that the war was lost.
Several nobles began to communicate with the enemy. In return for a guarantee over their privileges, they turned over the court's plan for fleeing further north. The Emperor was captured by a combination of Shogunate and British forces laying in ambush.
By the spring, the Emperor was quietly placed in comfortable quarters far from the center of power on Honshu.