Merchant Ships and Ship Portraits
The East Indiamen of Luny and Pocock. The clippers of Fitz Henry Lane and Buttersworth, the Flying Cloud, the Great Republic, the Thermopylae and the Cutty Sark. The emigrant ship of The Last of England, and the crowded Pearl River at Canton, the river of the tea trade.
This chapter of Ships in Paintings holds 99 works. For each one you will find the artist and, wherever the records allow, the date and where the original is kept; then what the ship brings to the picture, and the real ship behind it when there is one. See all 1,331 works on one page.
Marea can build any of these ships as a scale model, with the maximum detail the scale permits, finished to be inspected. We can build her as the artist saw her: the same rig, the same sails set, the same colours. It isn’t a copy of a painting. It’s the ship, stepping out of it.
This database was put together by Ai Refloat™, Marea’s own artificial intelligence, from the records of museums, maritime archives and published sources. Ai Refloat is still young & like any teenager, it can be a little volatile and unpredictable at times, but above all, it is learning fast. So this list may well contain mistakes and we welcome the input of everyone who knows these paintings, photographs and ships better than we do: listening, correcting and learning is one of the many ways we work towards perfection in this craft.
When no free image of a work exists, we show instead the museum or the place where the original can be seen.
Have you spotted a mistake? Tell us which painting, photograph or ship, and we will amend it accordingly. Tell us here
The works
Merchant ships · Print
Dutch East Indiaman being careened Unnamed
Dutch East Indiaman (from Navium Variae Figurae et Formae), 1647
Artist Wenceslaus Hollar (1607 to 1677)
Where to see it The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (25.83.7)
Medium Etching
Hollar, the Bohemian etcher who died in London, shows the side of the East India trade that ship portraits leave out: the upkeep. Six men on a raft caulk the planks of a hull in harbour while carpenters work on her deck, and to the right a fully fitted ship lies careened in the water, sailors on a raft treating her underwater timber among clouds of black smoke. The sheet belongs to his set of twelve plates of Dutch ships, Navium Variae Figurae et Formae, etched in 1647.
“sailors on a raft treating the under-water timber among clouds of black smoke”
The vessels An unnamed Dutch East Indiaman. Hollar shows one hull being caulked in harbour and a second, fully fitted ship careened so that her underwater timber could be treated.
Sources The Met
Merchant ships · Painting
A Dutch man-of-war and other Dutch ships in the harbour of Genoa Unnamed
The Port of Genoa, c. 1660
Artist Adriaen van der Cabel (1631 to 1705)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC0754, Palmer Collection)
Medium Oil on canvas
A Dutchman who lived in Rome from 1656 to 1668 and adopted an Italian palette there, van der Cabel painted this impression of the busy port of Genoa in the mid-seventeenth century. A Dutch man-of-war lies bow on at the left, another ship fires a salute, and further right smoke rises from a hull, perhaps being breamed, the burning of weed and barnacles from her bottom. Dutch ships crowd the far side of the harbour beneath the towers of the city. In front, two gentlemen ride past a ruined tower, with donkeys laden with baskets: the Mediterranean seen through northern eyes.
The vessels The ships are unnamed Dutch warships and merchantmen in the harbour of Genoa; one may be undergoing breaming, the burning off of weed and barnacles from the hull.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Image: Adriaen van der Cabel, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Painting
East India Company ship Unnamed
An English East Indiaman, c. 1720
Artist Peter Monamy (1681 to 1749)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC1011)
Medium Oil on canvas
Monamy began as a house painter and taught himself marine painting in the shadow of Van de Velde the Younger, and this early Indiaman shows why the Company's ships caught the imagination. She wears the red and white striped jack and ensign of the Honourable East India Company, a lion figurehead carved with ornament, a pennant at her main, and men busy aloft as she begins to take in sail. The odd, cropped composition suggests she was once part of a larger picture, but the ship herself is fully alive.
The vessels An unnamed ship of the Honourable East India Company, flying its red and white striped jack and ensign.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Merchant ships · Painting
East Indiaman hove to off a harbour Unnamed
An East Indiaman in a Fresh Breeze, c. 1750s
Artist Charles Brooking (c. 1723 to 1759)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC1019)
Medium Oil on canvas
Brooking catches a routine moment every sailor of the time knew: an East Indiaman lying hove to, red ensign flying, probably waiting for a boat, perhaps to take off her pilot. A small boat has just left the harbour wall to fetch him, while other ships sail on in the fresh breeze. Brooking's range shows the influence of Simon de Vlieger and Willem van de Velde the Younger, but the museum calls his approach uncompromisingly individual, and his care over detail shows real knowledge of seamanship and ship design. By 1755 his reputation as a marine painter was well established; he died four years later.
The vessels An unnamed East India Company ship, shown hove to off a harbour, probably to drop or collect her pilot.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Image: Charles Brooking, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Painting
Merchant ships and small craft at the entrance to the Old Port of Marseille Unnamed
The Entrance to the Port of Marseille (L'Entrée du port de Marseille), 1754
Artist Joseph Vernet (1714 to 1789)
Where to see it Musée du Louvre, Paris (INV 8293)
Medium Oil on canvas
Signed 'Peint par Joseph Vernet à Marseille en 1754', this is the first canvas of the royal series of the Ports of France commissioned for Louis XV. Vernet looks out towards the harbour mouth guarded by Fort Saint-Jean and the Citadelle Saint-Nicolas, and fills the foreground with the people of Marseille. The Louvre notes that he drew himself there, sketching, and the Salon booklet of 1755 pointed out the portrait of a man of 117 in good health, the old soldier Annibal Camoux. The ships are the reason for the view, yet Vernet makes the picture as much about the people who lived from them.
“Peint par Joseph Vernet à Marseille en 1754”
The vessels Merchant ships and harbour craft at the entrance to the port of Marseille, guarded by Fort Saint-Jean and the Citadelle Saint-Nicolas; the vessels are not named.
Sources Louvre · Wikipedia (FR) · Wikipedia
Merchant ships · Painting
A French merchant ship with vermilion stern and a Dutch merchantman in the Old Port of Marseille Unnamed
The Interior of the Port of Marseille, seen from the Pavillon de l'Horloge du Parc (L'Intérieur du port de Marseille, vu du Pavillon de l'Horloge du Parc), 1754
Artist Joseph Vernet (1714 to 1789)
Where to see it Musée national de la Marine, Paris (5 OA 3 D, deposit of the Musée du Louvre)
Medium Oil on canvas
Vernet took his view from the top of the clock pavilion above the quay to take in the whole width of the Old Port. Below him a crowd of every rank mingles: nobles, clergy, dockers, merchants and beggars, and figures in eastern dress among jars, bales and loose grain from all round the Mediterranean. Two ships hold the centre of the basin, a French vessel with a vermilion stern and a Mediterranean style of mast, and a Dutch ship beside her, a small lesson in how international Marseille was. The Musée national de la Marine notes that Vernet drew himself into the crowd with his wife Virginie and their son Livio.
“Prospérité et abondance imprègnent ces œuvres où les échanges commerciaux sont omniprésents”
The vessels Two unnamed trading ships: the French one has a vermilion-painted stern and a mast rig typical of Mediterranean practice, the Dutch-flagged one the build of northern ships, a sign of Marseille's international trade.
Sources Musée national de la Marine · Louvre · Wikipedia · Wikipedia (FR)
Merchant ships · Painting
A frigate of the Order of Malta and a lateen-rigged coaster at Antibes Unnamed
The Port of Antibes in Provence, seen from the Land Side (Le Port d'Antibes en Provence, vu du côté de la terre), 1756
Artist Joseph Vernet (1714 to 1789)
Where to see it Musée national de la Marine, Paris (INV 8299, deposit of the Musée du Louvre)
Medium Oil on canvas
Antibes stood on the frontier between France and Italy, and Vernet admitted its harbour was modest; he hoped, he told Marigny, that it would still make a good effect in paint. So he let the setting speak: sunset from inside the port, the natural anchorage between two rocky points, Fort Carré to the east and the snowy Alps on the horizon. At the entrance ride a frigate under the flag of the Order of Malta and a lateen-rigged coaster. In front, soldiers march into town, a man smokes his pipe and peasant women gather figs and oranges.
“j'espère que le port, quoique peu considérable, ne faira pas un movais effet en peinture”
The vessels A frigate flying the flag of the Order of Malta and a lateen-rigged coaster at the entrance to the Anse Saint-Roch; neither is named.
Sources Louvre · Wikipedia (FR) · Wikipedia
Image: Joseph Vernet; photo Jean-Pierre Dalbéra from Paris, France, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Painting
Merchant shipping on the Garonne at Bordeaux Unnamed
View of Part of the Port and Town of Bordeaux, taken from the Salinières side (Vue d'une partie du Port et de la ville de Bordeaux prise du côté des Salinières), 1759
Artist Joseph Vernet (1714 to 1789)
Where to see it Musée national de la Marine, Paris (INV 8301, deposit of the Musée du Louvre)
Medium Oil on canvas
After Sète, Vernet moved on to Bordeaux and gave the city two canvases, of which this is the first, taken from the Salinières side of the quays. Signed 'Peint par Joseph Vernet à Bordeaux', it shows the Garonne crowded with shipping beside a long line of stately façades, under a storm cloud. The pair were shown at the Salon of 1759, where Diderot marvelled that Vernet's whole talent lay in fourteen or fifteen canvases, the seas rising and calming at his command.
“Les mers se soulèvent et se tranquillisent à son gré”
The vessels In the eighteenth century Bordeaux turned to colonial trade with the Americas, above all the Antilles, and became the leading port of France. The ships in the picture are not named.
Sources Louvre · fr.wikisource.org · Wikipedia (FR) · Wikipedia
Merchant ships · Painting
Merchant shipping on the Garonne at Bordeaux Unnamed
View of the Port of Bordeaux, taken from the Château Trompette (Vue du port de Bordeaux, prise du château Trompette), 1759
Artist Joseph Vernet (1714 to 1789)
Where to see it Musée national de la Marine, Paris (deposit of the Musée du Louvre)
Medium Oil on canvas
The pendant to the Salinières view looks along the Garonne from the Château Trompette, over the river and the ships that made Bordeaux rich. Signed 'Peint par Joseph Vernet à Bordeaux en 1759', it was exhibited with its companion at the Salon of that year. From the terrace, elegant strollers look down on the quays, while tall ships lie at anchor and small sailing craft cross the broad river. Seen together, the two canvases make a portrait of a merchant city in the years of its Atlantic trade.
“Peint par Joseph Vernet à Bordeaux en 1759”
The vessels Merchant ships at anchor and river craft on the Garonne at Bordeaux, a port that grew rich on colonial trade in the eighteenth century. The ships are not named.
Sources Louvre · fr.wikisource.org · Wikipedia
Merchant ships · Painting
Shipping on the Adour at Bayonne Unnamed
View of Bayonne, taken halfway up the Glacis of the Citadel (Vue de Bayonne, prise à mi-côte sur le Glacis de la Citadelle), 1760 to 1761
Artist Joseph Vernet (1714 to 1789)
Where to see it Musée national de la Marine, Paris (INV 8303, deposit of the Musée du Louvre)
Medium Oil on canvas
The commission asked for one view of Bayonne, but Vernet could find no single viewpoint that told the whole story and won Marigny's leave to paint two. This one is the town's portrait: Bayonne at sunset seen from above on the right bank of the Adour, framed by two trees, with the cathedral before its nineteenth-century rebuilding, the Château Neuf and the old Porte de France. Shepherds, goats, peasants and washerwomen fill the shadowy foreground, and wine stores line the river where the ships lie. Diderot thought the dusk too dark.
“À demain, lorsque le soleil sera levé.”
The vessels Shipping moored on the Adour at Bayonne below riverside wine stores; Vernet gave the port's river and sea trade its own companion view. The vessels are unnamed.
Sources Louvre · Wikipedia (FR) · Wikipedia
Merchant ships · Painting
Adour river craft: chaland, galupe, chalibardon, halo, courau, tilhole and pinasse Unnamed
View of Bayonne, taken from the Allée de Boufflers near the Porte de Mousserole (Vue de Bayonne, prise de l'allée des Boufflers, près de la porte de Mousserole), 1761
Artist Joseph Vernet (1714 to 1789)
Where to see it Musée du Louvre, Paris (INV 8304), on deposit at the Musée national de la Marine, Paris
Medium Oil on canvas
The second of Vernet's two views of Bayonne, painted for Louis XV's series of the Ports of France, sets out the working life of the port. Seen at sunset from the left bank of the Adour, the harbour is full of ships laid up, careened and on the stocks, and the local river craft are set down with care: the chaland, galupe, chalibardon, halo, courau, tilhole and pinasse. In the left foreground, a group of figures brings the daily life of the riverside into the scene. Diderot admired the labour and the variety, but felt the evening light did the picture no favours.
“La chute du jour a rembruni et obscurci tous les objets.”
The vessels The chaland, galupe, chalibardon, halo, courau, tilhole and pinasse were the traditional river and estuary boats of the Adour at Bayonne; the ships laid up and building in the yards are not named.
Sources Louvre · Wikipedia (FR) · Wikipedia
Merchant ships · Painting
Merchant ships in the Old Port of La Rochelle Unnamed
View of the Port of La Rochelle, taken from the Petite Rive (Vue du port de La Rochelle, prise de la petite Rive), 1762
Artist Joseph Vernet (1714 to 1789)
Where to see it Musée du Louvre, Paris (INV 8305), on deposit at the Musée national de la Marine, Paris
Medium Oil on canvas
Signed 'Peint à La Rochelle, par J. Vernet, en 1762', this view of the Old Port was the one Diderot loved. At the Salon of 1763 he called it far more piquant than Vernet's Rochefort, praised the sky, the transparent water and the little groups of figures true to the place, and said that viewed through a spyglass that hid the frame you would forget you were looking at paint. The harbour it records was a trading port whose prosperity, as the city's own history recalls, rested in part on the slave trade.
“Le Port de la Rochelle est infiniment plus piquant. Voilà ce qu'on peut appeler un ciel ; voilà des eaux transparentes”
The vessels In the eighteenth century the Old Port of La Rochelle was a busy Atlantic trading harbour; in 1784 thirteen slaving expeditions sailed from it, fewer only than from Nantes and Le Havre. The ships in the view are not named.
Sources Louvre · fr.wikisource.org · Wikipedia (FR) · Wikipedia
Merchant ships · Painting
British ship of the line in the Bay of Baiae Unnamed
Coast Scene with a British Man of War, 1766
Artist Joseph Vernet (1714 to 1789)
Where to see it Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester
Medium Oil on canvas
Painted after Vernet had settled in Paris, for an unidentified English buyer, this is his Mediterranean coast tailored for a British eye. The Bay of Baiae off the coast of Naples opens in soft light, with the island of Procida in the distance and a round tower on the point. Fishermen and their families gather on the rocks by a beached boat. On the right, sails set and a long pennant streaming, a Royal Navy ship of the line glides in with her ensign at the stern, the flag of the nation whose collectors prized such views.
The vessels An unnamed ship of the line of Britain's Royal Navy, shown in the Bay of Baiae off the Kingdom of Naples.
Sources Wikipedia
Merchant ships · Painting
Hindostan (East Indiaman, 1789) Named ship
Towing the East Indiaman 'Hindustan', late 18th century
Artist Thomas Luny (1759 to 1837)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC3406)
Medium Oil on canvas
One of five paintings Luny made of the Hindostan, this one belongs to her most famous voyage: she left Torbay on 1 October 1792 as part of Lord Macartney's trading embassy to the Chinese emperor and did not return until September 1794. The embassy achieved little, and the ship herself, sold to the navy in 1795, would be burnt by accident in Rosas Bay in 1804. The museum also holds her log book and papers on the salvage of the wreck, and a telescope Macartney presented to the emperor, so the voyage survives in objects and words as well as paint.
The real ship Built at Barnard's yard in 1789 on the bottom of the Nassau, the 1,248-ton Hindostan carried part of the Macartney embassy to China, was sold to the government in 1795 as a fourth-rate, and was destroyed by accidental fire in Rosas Bay on 2 April 1804.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Merchant ships · Painting
York (East Indiaman, 1773) Named ship
The East Indiaman 'York' and Other Vessels, 1788
Artist Thomas Luny (1759 to 1837)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC3735)
Medium Oil on canvas
The York lies at the centre of the picture among several other vessels, off a low coast that may be Madras, with the buildings of Fort St George perhaps shown at the far right. Launched in 1773, she made five voyages for the East India Company, calling at Madras in July 1780 and July 1783, and Luny painted her in 1788, after the last of them. The Company was one of Luny's great patrons: he painted many pictures for its officers, sold ship portraits through the frame maker Thomas Merle near East India House, and was even invited aboard Company ships for special occasions.
The real ship Launched in 1773, the York made five voyages for the East India Company between 1773 and 1787, calling at Madras in July 1780 and in 1783.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Merchant ships · Painting
Hindostan (East Indiaman, 1789) Named ship
The East Indiaman 'Hindustan' off an Eastern coast, c. 1793
Artist Thomas Luny (1759 to 1837)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC3404)
Medium Oil on canvas
Of Luny's five pictures of the Hindostan, this is the gentlest: a scene bathed in golden light, with the ship and another vessel at anchor off the coast of China, the Hindostan probably drying her sails while a ship's boat pulls away and Chinese junks move across the water. The pictures commemorate her first voyage for the East India Company, to China in 1790 to 1791 under Captain William Mackintosh. The museum points out that this one dates from before Luny's own service in the Royal Navy, so the Eastern scene must have been painted from imagination.
“A scene bathed in golden light”
The real ship Launched at Deptford in 1789, the Hindostan made her first China voyage under Captain William Mackintosh in 1790 to 1791, then carried part of Lord Macartney's embassy in 1792. Sold to the Navy in 1795, she was burnt by accident in Rosas Bay on 2 April 1804.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Merchant ships · Painting
General Goddard (East Indiaman, 1781) Named ship
The East Indiaman 'General Goddard' Capturing Dutch East Indiamen, June 1795, late 18th to early 19th century
Artist Thomas Luny (1759 to 1837)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC0479)
Medium Oil on canvas
Here a merchant ship turns captor. Off St Helena on 11 June 1795, homeward bound during the war with France, the Company's General Goddard, with the Company packet Swallow and the warship Sceptre, took part in an action that ended in the capture of nine Dutch East Indiamen. It is a reminder that an Indiaman carried guns for a reason. The ship had a proud place in the Company's history: in 1788 she became the first vessel part-owned by Robert Wigram, future owner of Blackwall Yard. One of her officers, Henry Upton, went aboard the prize Dordwyk as prize master, and his commonplace book survives in the same museum.
The real ship Built by Randall, Brent and Sons in 1781 on the bottom of the Royal George, the 755-ton General Goddard was owned by William Money and in 1795 commanded by William Taylor Money; her convoy reached its moorings between 16 and 19 October 1795.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich
Merchant ships · Painting
Hindostan (East Indiaman, 1789) Named ship
The East Indiaman 'Hindustan' in a breeze in the East Indies, late 18th to early 19th century
Artist Thomas Luny (1759 to 1837)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC3405)
Medium Oil on canvas
Luny was commissioned to paint five pictures of the Hindostan from her first voyage to China for the East India Company, which sailed at the start of 1790 and came home in January 1791, and this is the one where she simply sails. She moves under full canvas off the China coast while a small Chinese craft, shaded by an awning, slips past with one man working both sail and tiller, and another British ship shows far off in the distance. The great Company ship and the little local boat share the same water, a meeting of two maritime worlds.
The real ship Launched by William Barnard at Deptford in November 1789, the Hindostan made a China voyage in 1790 to 1791 and then carried part of Lord Macartney's embassy to China in 1792. Bought by the Admiralty in 1795 as a fourth-rate and later a storeship, she caught fire on passage to Nelson's fleet and was run ashore and burnt in Rosas Bay on 2 April 1804.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Merchant ships · Painting
Hindostan (East Indiaman, 1796) and the China fleet of 1802 Named ship
A fleet of East Indiamen at sea, 1803
Artist Nicholas Pocock (1740 to 1821)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC1097)
Medium Oil on canvas
Pocock went to sea at seventeen and rose to command merchant ships before he took up painting in his early forties, and he paints the Company's China fleet coming home in 1802 as a sailor would see it: the commodore's ship Hindostan in the centre of eighteen sail, with the signal to wear. At the Royal Academy the title spelt out the order in full, sternmost and leewardmost ships first. It is a picture of discipline and wealth moving together across the ocean, and its calm has a shadow: on 11 January 1803, at the start of her next voyage, the Hindostan was lost on the Margate Sands.
“The Hindostan, G. Millett, commander, and senior officer of eighteen sail of East Indiamen, with the signal to wear”
The real ship The Hindostan was a large East Indiaman of 1,248 tons built in 1796 to replace an earlier ship of the name; she led the convoy home from China in 1802, eleven of whose ships are known to have reached their English moorings between 11 and 14 July. On 11 January 1803, at the start of her fourth voyage, she was lost in a heavy gale on Margate Sands with up to thirty of her crew.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Image: Nicholas Pocock, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Painting
Warley (East Indiaman, 1795) Named ship
The East Indiaman 'Warley', 1804
Artist Robert Salmon (1775 to after 1845)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC3707)
Medium Oil on canvas
The Warley is shown three times off Blackwall at sunset: broadside in the foreground, from astern with her name on her transom, and from the bow in the distance, with John Perry's Brunswick Dock across the river and the Blackwall mast house rising beside it. She was built by Perry's yard in 1795. Early in 1804, under Captain Henry Wilson, she helped Commodore Nathaniel Dance's fleet of Indiamen bluff and drive off a French squadron under Linois off Pulo Aor, and the museum suggests this may have prompted Wilson to commission the picture. It passed down in his family.
The real ship Built by Perry's yard at Blackwall in 1795, the 1,475-ton Warley was one of the larger East India Company ships; she made nine voyages to the East between 1796 and 1816, most of them direct to China, took part in Dance's action off Pulo Aor in 1804, and was sold for breaking up in 1816.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich
Merchant ships · Painting
Merchant ships at the Chartrons quays of Bordeaux Unnamed
View of Part of the Port and Quays of Bordeaux called the Chartrons and Bacalan (Vue d'une partie du port et des quais de Bordeaux dits des Chartrons et de Bacalan), 1804 to 1806
Artist Pierre Lacour (1745 to 1814)
Where to see it Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux (Bx E 682, deposit of the Musée des Arts décoratifs et du Design)
Medium Oil on canvas
On a canvas more than three metres wide, the Bordeaux painter Pierre Lacour looks along the Chartrons and Bacalan quays at the start of the nineteenth century. The view centres on the Hôtel Fenwick, built for the American merchant Joseph Fenwick, whose consulate there was the first United States consulate in the world, and the whole waterfront hums with activity. Lacour put his own family into the crowd: the girl with a parasol in the foreground is his daughter, the man she speaks to is Lacour himself, and his son leans on the rail beside them.
The vessels Between 1795 and 1807 more than 2,000 American ships came to Bordeaux, their main destination while the British blockaded the Channel ports. The ships at the quays are not named.
Sources Wikipedia (FR)
Merchant ships · Painting
Ganges and Earl Saint Vincent (East Indiamen) Named ship
The East Indiaman 'Saint Vincent' saving the crew of the East Indiaman 'Ganges', 29 May 1807
Artist William John Huggins (1781 to 1845)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC3622)
Medium Oil on canvas
Two Company ships homeward bound meet off the Cape, one sinking, one saving. The Ganges, returning from China on her fourth voyage under Captain T. Talbot Harrington, was going down on 29 May 1807 at latitude 38 degrees south, and the smaller Earl Saint Vincent, returning from Bombay under Captain Charles Jones, took off her crew. The Ganges had a proud history, having taken a prominent part in Commodore Dance's action against Linois's squadron in 1804. Details of the rescue were published the following year in Thomas Tegg's account of shipwrecks.
The real ship The 1,200-ton Ganges was built at Wells's Yard and entered Company service in 1796, making four voyages before she sank off the Cape on 29 May 1807 under Captain T. Talbot Harrington. The 818-ton Earl Saint Vincent, under Captain Charles Jones, reached English waters on 10 September 1807.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich
Image: William John Huggins, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Painting
Armed mail packet in the Mersey Unnamed
A packet off Liverpool, 1809
Artist Robert Salmon (1775 to after 1845)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC1862)
Medium Oil on canvas
Painted when Salmon was living in Liverpool, this early work shows a small, heavily armed ship twice, making sail in the foreground and again from astern in the distance, with the town's buildings drawn with care across the Mersey. She looks like a frigate, but her pennant is the one flown by mail packets, and she is signalling for a pilot; a pilot cutter on the left is already responding. Some have wondered whether she was a privateer. The fins of fish in the foreground nod to the Dutch masters, but the seamanship is Salmon's own and first-hand.
The vessels Armed packets carried mail and passengers on scheduled routes during the Napoleonic wars; this ship is unidentified, and the museum notes she may have been a privateer.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Merchant ships · Painting
American merchant ship and the Margate packet Duke of Kent Named ship
An American Ship in Distress, 1811
Artist C. John M. Whichelo
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC1210)
Medium Oil on canvas
An American ship runs in towards Margate before an easterly gale, her fore topgallant mast snapped off, still carrying too much sail, her flag flown upside down in distress. Crossing hazardously close under her bows is the little cutter Duke of Kent, one of the regular passenger smacks between London and Margate, her name on her mainsail, while a pilot lugger with five men pitches out to help and the jetty fills with watchers. The museum notes the date, the year before the United States declared war on Britain, and wonders whether the artist meant a second reading.
“she appears dangerously over-canvassed for her situation, as she runs in before a easterly gale”
The real ship The Duke of Kent was one of the regular passenger cutters serving Margate from London; the American ship is unidentified.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich
Image: C. John M. Whichelo, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Drawing
A French galley at Marseille Unnamed
French Galley at Marseilles, 1816
Artist Ange-Joseph Antoine Roux (1765 to 1835)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (PAG9744, Caird Collection)
Medium Watercolour
The Roux family kept a hydrographer's shop on the Old Port of Marseille, selling charts and compass roses to sea captains, and from that counter grew a dynasty of ship portrait painters whose work spanned a century. Antoine Roux, son of the King's hydrographer Joseph Roux, learned to draw the many ships lying in the harbour, and he has sometimes been called the inventor of the ship portrait in France. This signed watercolour of 1816 records a French galley at Marseille, the long oared warship of the Mediterranean, set down with the same care the family gave to its charts.
“The family hydrographic business included marine pictures as an adjunct”
The vessels An unnamed French galley, the oared warship of the Mediterranean, drawn at Marseille in 1816.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia (FR)
Image: Ange-Joseph Antoine Roux, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Painting
Thames (East Indiaman) Named ship
On board an Indiaman (Deck scene in an Indiaman), early 19th century
Artist Attributed to Captain Robert Williams
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC1080)
Medium Oil on canvas
Rare among Indiaman pictures, this one takes us aboard. The donor said it was painted by a captain of an East Indiaman called Williams around the time of Trafalgar, which would make him Robert Williams of the Thames on her voyage to Bombay and China in 1802 to 1803. If so, it is a sea officer's own view of his deck, painted from the inside of the life most ship portraits only show from a distance. The attribution cannot be proved, and that uncertainty is part of its charm.
“a captain of an East Indiaman called Williams about the time of Trafalgar”
The real ship The 1,200-ton Thames, owned by Abel Chapman, was built on the bottom of the Winterton of 1795 and remained in East India Company service until 1813, completing eight voyages to the East.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich
Image: Attributed to Captain Robert Williams, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Painting
Atlas (East Indiaman, 1812) Named ship
The East Indiaman 'Atlas', 1826
Artist William John Huggins (1781 to 1845)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC3214)
Medium Oil on canvas marouflaged onto Sundaela board
Huggins shows the Atlas off Dover in 1826, probably at the end of her seventh voyage to Madras and China. Behind the calm portrait lies the private economy of the Company's ships. Her captain, Charles Otway Mayne, grew rich on his perquisites, and in 1817 his surgeon and second mate complained at Canton that he had taken all the extra private cargo space officers were allowed; they won. The ship herself went for breaking in 1831 for only 4,100 pounds, much of it probably for her furnishings. A portrait of a ship is also a portrait of a business.
The real ship Built in 1812 at Paul's Yard near Hull for managing owner James Staniforth, she sailed for India in 1813 and made ten voyages to Madras, Bengal and China until 1830, then was sold for breaking in May 1831.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Image: William John Huggins, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Painting
Merchant ships off the Custom House, Greenock Unnamed
The Custom House at Greenock, Scotland, 1828
Artist Robert Salmon (1775 to after 1845)
Where to see it The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1979.488)
Medium Oil on wood
Salmon had lived in Greenock, then Scotland's oldest and most important shipbuilding town, and the Met believes he painted this view of it probably just after he arrived in America in 1828. A tempest is rising: in the museum's words, the cyclonic cloud formation, the eerie light and the tilting ships are pitted against the solid Doric Custom House that William Burn built in 1818. Trade and weather meet in one frame, the permanence of the building set against the sea that every ship in its shadow had to face.
“the cyclonic cloud formation, the eerie light, and the tilting ships”
The vessels The vessels are unnamed merchant ships off the Custom House at Greenock on the Clyde.
Merchant ships · Painting
Earl of Balcarres (East Indiaman, 1815) Named ship
The East Indiaman 'Earl of Balcarres' off the coast of China, 1828
Artist William John Huggins (1781 to 1845)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC3301)
Medium Painting
The Earl of Balcarres was a ship of India as much as of London: built for the East India Company at Bombay in 1815 of Malabar teak, whose natural oils kept her watertight and resisted the teredo worm. Huggins paints her off the China coast on her voyage of 1828 to 1829 to Bengal and China under Captain Bryan Broughton, and it was Broughton's family who later gave the picture to the museum. It is the portrait of a working command, a ship of 1,417 tons with twenty-six guns and 130 men.
The real ship Built for the East India Company at Bombay in 1815 of Malabar teak, 1,417 tons with 26 guns and a crew of 130, she made nine voyages for the Company until 1833 and was sold in September 1834 to Thomas A. Shutter for 10,700 pounds.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Image: William John Huggins, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Painting
Lykkens Prøve Named ship
A Danish Sloop Running before the Wind (Un sloop danois allant vent arrière), 1831
Artist C. W. Eckersberg (1783 to 1853)
Where to see it Musée du Louvre, Paris (RF 2241)
Medium Oil on canvas
Seen from the Danish shore near Kalvehave, looking towards the island of Møn, the sloop Lykkens Prøve runs before the wind, her name legible on the stern, her boat in her wake and a few passengers on deck. On the quarterdeck the skipper raises his top hat to salute the viewer, a charming human touch in Eckersberg's cool, exact seascape. At least five more sails dot the horizon, the nearest also flying the Danish flag. The picture came to the Louvre in 1919, a gift from a group of Danish art lovers in thanks for the release of another Eckersberg from sequestration.
The real ship Lykkens Prøve was a Danish sloop, once catalogued by the Louvre as an old Danish packet boat, shown sailing in the strait between Møn and Zealand with passengers aboard.
Sources Louvre · Wikipedia (FR)
Image: C. W. Eckersberg, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Painting
Christianshavn Named ship
The Frigate Christianshavn of the Danish Asiatic Company off Table Mountain (Christianshavn ved Taffelbjerget), c. 1831
Artist C. W. Eckersberg (1783 to 1853)
Where to see it Sønderborg Castle, Sønderborg
Medium Oil on canvas
A Danish Asiatic Company ship under sail off the Cape of Good Hope, Table Mountain behind her. Eckersberg never saw the Cape; he based the picture on a recent work by another artist, bringing to it his own knowledge of rig and hull. The ship had a remarkable life: built as a British East Indiaman, she was taken by the French in 1798 and sold to Denmark in 1800 to sail for the Asiatic Company, which after 1772 held the Danish monopoly of the China trade. The painting is a small record of Denmark's long voyages east.
The real ship Originally a British East Indiaman, captured by the French in 1798 and sold to Denmark in 1800, she sailed for the Danish Asiatic Company, which held the Danish monopoly of the China trade after 1772.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia (DA)
Image: C. W. Eckersberg, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Painting
HDMS Dronning Marie Named ship
The 84 Gun Danish Warship "Dronning Marie" in the Sound (Et dansk orlogsskib "Dronning Marie" på 84 kanoner under sejl i Sundet), 1834
Artist C. W. Eckersberg (1783 to 1853)
Where to see it Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen (KMS255)
Medium Oil on canvas
Eckersberg asked the harbour master at Nyholm for leave to join Dronning Marie on her maiden voyage around Zealand in 1834. He came aboard on 5 July with his friend Emil Normann, and two days later, in the Bay of Sejrø, the two painters went off in a rowing boat to paint the ship under sail in the Great Belt. His portrait of her dates from that same year: a new Danish ship of the line studied from the water by a painter who had taken the trouble to go to sea with her. Ten years earlier he had drawn her on the stocks at Nyholm.
The real ship Built at Nyholm to a design by Andreas Schifter, launched in 1824 and completed in 1827, 84 guns and 771 men. She grounded off Sprogø in 1834, carried Crown Prince Frederik to Iceland and the Faroes the same year, became a 60-gun frigate in 1849 and an accommodation ship in 1858; decommissioned in 1862.
Sources SMK · Wikipedia · Wikimedia Commons
Image: C. W. Eckersberg, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Print
England (New York packet ship) Named ship
First class New York packet ship England, Captn B. L. Waite, inward bound off Point Lynas, making signal for a Pilot, 1834
Artist After Samuel Walters (1811 to 1882); published by Rudolph Ackermann, lithographed by Day and Haghe
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (PAH0554)
Medium Coloured lithograph
The long title tells the whole story of a crossing's end. The first-class New York packet England, Captain B. L. Waite, is inward bound off Point Lynas on Anglesey and is making the signal for a pilot to take her in. The print was published in 1834 by Rudolph Ackermann and lithographed by Day and Haghe after Samuel Walters, then a young painter who had begun exhibiting in Liverpool only four years before, and it was sold hand-coloured. It is the Atlantic packet trade seen at its most hopeful moment, land in sight and the voyage nearly done.
The real ship The England was a first-class sailing packet in the New York trade, recorded by the museum as a ship of 1834 under Captain B. L. Waite.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, where the original is kept. Photo: TxllxT, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Merchant ships · Drawing
Phenix Named ship
Phenix, Captain Ch. Vidal (Phenix Capne Ch. Vidal), 1834
Artist Mathieu-Antoine Roux (1799 to 1872)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (PAH0555)
Medium Watercolour on board
This is the classic Marseille ship portrait from the Roux family, hydrographers on the Old Port who painted ships for their captain clients. Mathieu-Antoine Roux, son of Antoine, shows the three-masted barque Phenix from the starboard quarter, the French flag at her stern gaff and pennants at her mastheads, a lighthouse in the distance and two small sailing vessels to the right. The inscription names her master, Captain Vidal, as proudly as the ship herself.
The real ship The Phenix was a French three-masted merchant barque, recorded here in 1834 under Captain Ch. Vidal; the museum records nothing further of her career.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia (FR)
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, where the original is kept. Photo: TxllxT, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Merchant ships · Painting
Najaden and Bellona Named ship
The Corvette Najaden Waiting in the Sound for the Frigate Bellona (Korvetten Najaden, som i Sundet venter fregatten Bellona), 1835
Artist C. W. Eckersberg (1783 to 1853)
Where to see it The Hirschsprung Collection, Copenhagen (inv. 120)
Medium Oil on canvas
Eckersberg painted the corvette Najaden again and again: the Hirschsprung Collection and Nivaagaard each hold a portrait of her under sail, and the Statens Museum for Kunst has his study of her starboard battery and deck. Here she waits in the Sound for the frigate Bellona, a quiet naval rendezvous rather than a battle. It is the work of a painter who had been granted free access to the Copenhagen naval station at Holmen by the Admiralty in 1819.
The real ship The corvette Najaden served the Danish navy in the West Indies in 1824 to 1825, when piracy was rife; with a few of her sailors aboard the small schooner Vigilant, the young officer Carl Irminger boarded the pirate ship Adolpho between Puerto Rico and Culebra. Little is recorded of the frigate Bellona.
Sources Wikidata · Wikipedia (DA) · Wikipedia
Image: C. W. Eckersberg, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Painting
Skjold Named ship
The Danish Ship of the Line Skjold under Sail (Orlogsskibet Skjold under Sejl), 1836
Artist C. W. Eckersberg (1783 to 1853)
Where to see it Private collection (sold at Bruun Rasmussen, Copenhagen, 2007)
Medium Oil on canvas
In 1836 the ship of the line Skjold went on a summer cruise in the North Sea and the Baltic under Anthonius Krieger, and in the same year Eckersberg painted her portrait under sail. The picture stayed with the painter until his death: it was sold at his estate auction in 1853, later belonged to the landowner J. C. Hauberg, and reappeared at auction in Copenhagen in 2007. It shows the Danish navy at peace, painted by an artist who had been given free access to the naval station at Holmen.
The real ship Skjold was a ship of the line of the Royal Danish Navy; in 1836 she cruised the North Sea and the Baltic under Anthonius Krieger.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia (DA) · Wikipedia
Image: C. W. Eckersberg, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Painting
Asia (East Indiaman, 1811) Named ship
The East Indiaman 'Asia', 1836
Artist William John Huggins (1781 to 1845)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC3209)
Medium Oil on canvas
Huggins had sailed to Bombay and China on the East Indiaman Perseverance in 1812 to 1814 before setting up as a painter near the Company's London headquarters in Leadenhall Street, and he shows the Asia off Hong Kong in starboard broadside, red ensign and distinguishing flags flying, Chinese junks to left and right. The picture belonged to Thomas Gardiner, her purser on her tenth voyage of 1831 to 1832, and passed to his family. Critics found Huggins weak in colouring and composition, but William IV valued his correctness, and it is that exactness which makes this portrait of an Indiaman near the end of her career a record worth having.
“esteemed his work rather for its correctness than its art”
The real ship Built in 1811, the Asia made ten voyages for the East India Company between 1811 and 1832, the first leaving Portsmouth on 10 March 1812. Her last, in 1831 to 1832, took her to Madras, Bengal and China.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Image: William John Huggins, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Print
USS Constitution (1797), Old Ironsides Named ship
U.S. Frigate Constitution, 1838 to 1856
Artist Nathaniel Currier (1813 to 1888), lithographer and publisher
Where to see it The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (67.618.2)
Medium Hand-coloured lithograph
Before Currier and Ives there was Nathaniel Currier alone, and one of the heroes of his prints was the frigate Americans called Old Ironsides. The Met's print shows her sailing to the right under the American flag, crew visible on deck and climbing the mast, a simple popular portrait for the walls of homes and offices. Her fame came from the War of 1812, when she captured HMS Guerriere and four other British warships, and public affection repeatedly saved her from being scrapped.
The real ship Designed by Joshua Humphreys and built at Edmund Hartt's shipyard in Boston, Constitution was launched in 1797, one of the six original frigates of the Naval Act of 1794. She served in the Quasi-War and the First Barbary War, captured Guerriere, Java, Pictou, Cyane and Levant in the War of 1812, circled the world in the 1840s and remains in commission as the oldest naval vessel still afloat.
Merchant ships · Painting
Joseph Cunard (barque) Named ship
The barque Joseph Cunard, 1839
Artist Samuel Walters (1811 to 1882)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC3430)
Medium Oil on canvas
This is the pierhead portrait at its most exact. Walters shows the new barque on her delivery voyage to Liverpool, about to pass the Skerries lighthouse off Anglesey, with every flag set down so it can be read: the Union flag with a white border at the fore, the J.P.S. house flag of her owners Smith and Co. of Liverpool at the main, her signal number from Marryat's code of 1817 at the mizzen and the red ensign at the gaff. Walters, one of the best-known painters of the Liverpool school, signed and dated it in red in the corner.
The real ship A British merchant barque owned by Smith and Co. of Liverpool and listed in Lloyd's Register from 1841 onwards; the painting shows her delivery voyage to Liverpool in 1839.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Merchant ships · Painting
Owen Glendower (Blackwall frigate, 1839) Named ship
The Blackwall frigate 'Owen Glendower' at anchor off a coastline, 1839
Artist G. W. Butland
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC3532)
Medium Oil on canvas
The picture was long called the Owen Glendower coming into harbour, but she is in fact at anchor off the English south coast, probably just east of Hastings, with her sails spread to dry. Butland signed and dated it 1839, the year Green's built her; she was first registered for voyages between London and Madras and flies the early house flag of their Blackwall line at her main truck. The museum also holds a model of her and a print by T. G. Dutton of her entering Calcutta, so she can be followed from the yard to India.
“probably just east of Hastings if the ruins on the cliff are indicative”
The real ship Built by Green's at Blackwall in 1839, the 852-ton Indiaman was first registered for London to Madras voyages. Like her sisters Vernon and Earl of Hardwick she was designed with auxiliary paddles; hers were removed before her first voyage, and theirs later, after they proved unsuccessful.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich
Merchant ships · Painting
Triton (East Indiaman) Named ship
The East Indiaman 'Triton', 1839
Artist William John Huggins (1781 to 1845)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC3674)
Medium Oil on canvas
Huggins shows the Triton broadside on under full sail off the coast of China, and then adds a touch that turns a portrait into a meeting: a small local junk in the foreground, the figures aboard looking up at the great ship passing. For two hundred years East Indiamen carried the trade between Britain and India, and the museum notes that ships like the Triton were often luxuriously fitted and much more commodious than Royal Navy ships. Huggins, who had sailed to China on an Indiaman himself, signed and dated the canvas in 1839.
The real ship The Triton, recorded by the museum as a ship of 1787, was an East India Company merchant ship trading to the East.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Image: William John Huggins, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Painting
A privateer schooner and a frigate Unnamed
A Privateer Schooner Outsailing a Pursuing Frigate (En kaperskonnert, som undløber en forfølgende fregat), 1845
Artist C. W. Eckersberg (1783 to 1853)
Where to see it Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen (KMS3767)
Medium Oil on canvas
Eckersberg had a passion for ships, and at 56 he sailed the Skagerrak, the Kattegat, the North Sea and as far as the English Channel; after that his marine paintings, once calm, paid far more attention to wind and waves. This canvas of 1845 belongs to those later years. A small privateer schooner is outsailing the frigate that chases her, the whole drama carried by sail and sea. The painter Wilhelm Marstrand bought it from Eckersberg on 20 September 1845, the year it was made.
The vessels A privateer schooner, a small privately armed vessel, escaping a pursuing naval frigate; neither ship is named.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia · Wikipedia (DA)
Image: C. W. Eckersberg, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Painting
John W. Brewer Named ship
The Ship "John W. Brewer", c. 1845
Artist Chinese painter
Where to see it The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (41.14)
Medium Oil on canvas
This portrait of the John W. Brewer, a clipper built at Cohasset, Massachusetts, was painted around 1845 by an unnamed Chinese artist, and the ship and the painter together tell the story of the China trade. As the Met explains, clippers like her evolved from heavier, slower sailing vessels because of the demand for fresh tea from China, and some could make the passage from China to New York in under seventy-five days. An American hull recorded by a Chinese brush: the picture is itself a product of the trade that shaped the ship.
“Clipper ships such as this evolved from heavier, slower sailing vessels in response to the demand for fresh tea from China”
The real ship The John W. Brewer was a clipper built at Cohasset, Massachusetts, in the era of the American China tea trade.
Sources The Met
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, where the original is kept. Photo: Arad, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Merchant ships · Painting
Gundalow, packet sloop, brig and transatlantic packet ships in Boston Harbor Unnamed
Harbor of Boston, with the City in the Distance, c. 1846 to 1847
Artist Fitz Henry Lane (1804 to 1865)
Where to see it The Cleveland Museum of Art (2004.35)
Medium Oil on canvas
One of Lane's first oil views of Boston in which the skyline becomes part of the atmosphere rather than a backdrop, the city dissolving into sunset mist as seen from Governor's Island. Unusually, the great merchant ships are pushed to the background and the humblest craft of all, a gundalow, takes the foreground, catching the eye and leading it round the harbour. Infrared study shows Lane redrew its helmsman and an oarsman. Around it a brig dries her sails and passes cargo to a packet sloop, and a deep-laden topsail schooner heads out to sea.
The vessels The gundalow was a flat-bottomed river and harbour barge of New England; packet sloops distributed cargo to small coastal towns; the large ships in the distance carry the painted false gunports then fashionable in the transatlantic packet trade.
Sources fitzhenrylaneonline.org · Cleveland Museum of Art
Image: Fitz Henry Lane, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Painting
Magnolia (packet ship) Named ship
The ship Magnolia, c. 1847 to 1882
Artist Samuel Walters (1811 to 1882)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC3466)
Medium Oil on canvas
In 1847 the Magnolia was a ship of the St George line of packets, sailing between New York and Liverpool with Captain Edward Gray as master, and Samuel Walters painted her portrait. Walters was born in London, settled in Liverpool, where he was well known, and his work was popular in North America too, so a packet like this one, belonging to both ends of the Atlantic crossing, was exactly his kind of subject. The canvas is a straightforward ship portrait, made to record one vessel of the busy transatlantic packet trade.
“The ‘Magnolia’ was a ship in the St. George line of packet ships in 1847 operating between New York and Liverpool”
The real ship The Magnolia was a packet ship of the St George Line running between New York and Liverpool in 1847, commanded by Captain Edward Gray.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Merchant ships · Painting
American frigate traditionally identified as USS Constitution (probably a 32-gun frigate) Unnamed
The "Constitution" in Boston Harbor, c. 1848 to 1849
Artist Fitz Henry Lane (1804 to 1865)
Where to see it Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga (1968.4)
Medium Oil on canvas mounted on panel
For generations this was admired as a portrait of Old Ironsides at home in Boston, seen from Governor's Island with the city behind. Close study by the Lane catalogue tells a different story: the warship shows twelve gunports on her gun deck where Constitution had sixteen, so she is more likely a 32-gun frigate built between the War of 1812 and the early 1840s. Around her Lane gathers the everyday traffic of the port, a New England boat, a sloop, two merchant brigs, a yawl boat, a topsail schooner and a pinky, so that the navy's ship rides among the working craft of the harbour.
The vessels USS Constitution was rated a 44-gun frigate; the vessel painted here, with smaller armament and solid bulwarks on her spar deck, fits the 32-gun frigate rating of American ships built between 1812 and the early 1840s. Her exact identity is unknown.
Sources fitzhenrylaneonline.org · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, where the original is kept. Photo: JJonahJackalope, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Merchant ships · Painting
Shipping on the Pearl River before the Canton factories Unnamed
Shipping off Canton, c. 1849 to 1856
Artist Chinese School and British School, 19th century
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC1777)
Medium Oil on canvas
This is the world that the tea clippers raced to reach. Across the still Pearl River stand the foreign factories of Canton, flying the flags of Denmark, Britain and the United States, the trading posts European merchants were not allowed to leave. On the water every kind of craft gathers, from small junks to large traders and a pair of pleasure yachts, around a steamer probably of the Hong Kong and Canton Steam Packet Company. The painting fuses Western topography with Chinese conventions, down to a distant mountain, and a serene stillness hangs over the river of the tea trade.
“a serene stillness pervades the scene”
The vessels The Hong Kong and Canton Steam Packet Company, founded on 19 October 1848, ran small London-built steamers between Hong Kong and Canton from spring 1849; around them worked the junks and sailing ships of the tea trade.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich
Image: Chinese School and British School, 19th century, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Painting
Columbia (Black Ball Line packet) Named ship
The Black Ball Line ship Columbia, 19th century
Artist British School, 19th century
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC3265)
Medium Oil on board
The Black Ball Line began in 1817, when a group of New York Quaker merchants headed by Jeremiah Thompson started the first scheduled transatlantic service, four packet ships running between Liverpool and New York. The line took its name from its flag, a black ball on red, which found its way into sea shanties such as Blow the Man Down and Hurrah for the Black Ball Line. The Columbia, built in New York by William H. Webb, carried passengers for the line. From 1851 a Liverpool firm, James Baines and Co., used the same name and flag in direct competition for about twenty years.
The real ship Built in New York by William H. Webb, recorded by the museum as a ship of 1846, the Columbia was a passenger packet of the Black Ball Line, the transatlantic service founded in 1817.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich
Image: British School, 19th century, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Painting
Merchant ships at anchor in Boston Harbor at sunset Unnamed
Boston Harbor, Sunset, 1850 to 1855
Artist Fitz Henry Lane (1804 to 1865)
Where to see it Los Angeles County Museum of Art (AC1993.229.1)
Medium Oil on canvas
Pink and gold light fills Boston's harbour, LACMA writes, as great merchant ships align themselves along a corridor of reflected sun. The viewpoint is low, as if from a small boat just behind two men rowing into the light, so the hulls loom and the spars soar above us. LACMA notes that Lane softens the harsh, often dangerous working port, while his choice of subject still recalls New England's global trades. The Lane catalogue calls this picture and its twin at Boston poems of stillness, silence and light.
“Pink and gold light suffuse this view of Boston's busy harbor.”
The vessels Full-rigged merchant and packet ships, brigs and small craft at anchor in Boston Harbor; Lane's first Boston patrons were all involved in the maritime trades. The ships are not named.
Sources collections.lacma.org · fitzhenrylaneonline.org
Image: Fitz Henry Lane, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Painting
Unidentified American merchant ship working to windward in a gale Unnamed
Close Hauled in a Gale, c. 1850
Artist Fitz Henry Lane (1804 to 1865)
Where to see it Peabody Essex Museum, Salem (M18980)
Medium Oil
An unnamed merchant ship claws to windward on the starboard tack as a storm abates, while another vessel runs before the wind on the horizon. Lane paints her sail plan with near-photographic accuracy: topsails reefed, crossjack and topgallants furled, royals and their yards sent down, only the inner jib and jib set forward, every sail balanced to ease the helm. The Lane catalogue wonders why he lavished such detail on a ship with no name and no house flag, and for whom. The answer is lost, but the picture reads as a hymn to seamanship.
“Lane's attention to detail verges on photographic, leading to the question: why would he depict a nameless ship in such detail, and for whom?”
The vessels The ship belongs to the class of large merchant ships called ocean carriers or ocean freighters, built for capacity with moderate speed; their construction stopped with the Panic of 1857 and resumed after the Civil War, when Maine yards made them famous as down easters.
Sources fitzhenrylaneonline.org
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, where the original is kept. Photo: Fletcher6, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Merchant ships · Painting
Three-masted clipper, possibly the Nightingale (1851) Unnamed
New England Harbor at Sunrise, c. 1850
Artist Fitz Henry Lane (1804 to 1865)
Where to see it Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester, Massachusetts (gift of Judge Lawrence Brooks, 1970)
Medium Oil on canvas
Two smartly dressed seamen sit deep in conversation on an overturned dory at dawn, while a three-masted clipper with elaborate headrails, mouldings and a small female figurehead lies beside the pier. The Lane scholar Erik Ronnberg has proposed that the harbour is Portsmouth, New Hampshire, rather than Gloucester, and that the old-fashioned beakhead resembles that of the Nightingale, built there in 1851. Infrared images show that Lane barely changed his pencil drawing of the vessels, while he drew and redrew the figures. The result lifts ordinary sailors and a merchant ship to the dignity of history painting, in the optimistic light of early morning.
The vessels The Nightingale was a clipper built by Samuel Hanscom at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and launched in June 1851; she was towed to Boston in July 1851 while her builder's finances were settled and she was sold to a Boston firm.
Sources fitzhenrylaneonline.org
Image: Fitz Henry Lane, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Painting
Princess Amelia of Liverpool Named ship
The packet 'Princess Amelia', 19th century
Artist British School, 19th century
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC3562)
Medium Oil on canvas
Not every ship portrait came from a master. This one, which the museum calls primitive and highly stylised, shows the Princess Amelia of Liverpool broadside on under full sail, her name carried across the top of the canvas in a banner, figures at work on her deck, a tower on the distant shore and a small single-masted boat to the right. What it lacks in finish it makes up in directness: the ship, her name and her crew, set down plainly by an unknown hand. A ship of this name was wrecked off Moelfre, on Anglesey, in 1868.
“A primitive and highly stylised portrait of the ‘Princess Amelia’ of Liverpool”
The real ship The Princess Amelia of Liverpool, recorded by the museum as a ship of 1799; a ship of the same name was wrecked off the coast of Moelfre in 1868.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich
Image: British School, 19th century, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Painting
Caduceus (ship, 1854) Named ship
The ship Caduceus off Hong Kong, 19th century
Artist Chinese School, 19th century
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC3763)
Medium Oil on canvas on board
The Caduceus is shown off Hong Kong in a ship portrait that the museum thinks is possibly by a Chinese artist. Western-style oil paintings made in China in the nineteenth century were mostly the work of anonymous craftsmen and were never regarded as high art by Chinese literati; a few well-known workshops in Canton, Hong Kong and Shanghai worked for Western customers, and when painters signed at all, they signed in English. Here that export trade turns its eye on a Western merchant ship at the colony.
The real ship The Caduceus, recorded by the museum as a ship of 1854, portrayed off Hong Kong.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich
Image: Chinese School, 19th century, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Painting
Merchant barque breaking out of the ice, with a coasting schooner and two fishing schooners Unnamed
Ships in Ice off Ten Pound Island, Gloucester, 1850s
Artist Fitz Henry Lane (1804 to 1865)
Where to see it Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (48.447)
Medium Oil on canvas
Gloucester Harbor seldom froze, but in one hard winter of the 1850s the ice spread across much of it, and Lane shows a merchant barque breaking her way out. Men with picks and hammers crack the ice ahead of her, provisions arrive by sled, and a small schooner secured alongside heels under sail to bear down on the ice and help it break. The Lane catalogue sees a quiet irony in the scene: a merchant barque of antiquated design flanked by two sleek new fishing schooners, just as Gloucester's foreign trade was declining and its fishing industry was reviving.
“an unintended mix of promise and foreboding on Lane's part, but there it is.”
The vessels A merchant barque of old-fashioned design, a small coasting schooner lashed alongside to help break the ice, and two fishing schooners whose fine hulls show the influence of the new sharpshooter and clipper schooners; none are named.
Sources fitzhenrylaneonline.org · MFA Boston
Image: Fitz Henry Lane, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Painting
Thermopylae Named ship
The tea clipper 'Thermopylae', 19th century
Artist F. I. Sorenson
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC3658)
Medium Oil on board
The painter has inscribed it simply 'The Famous Tea-Clipper Thermopylae', and the ship needs no more. She sails broadside on under full canvas, flying the house flag of the Aberdeen White Star Line, whose fleet was known for style and for its glistening green livery. Thermopylae was the Cutty Sark's great rival: in the tea race of 1872 the Cutty Sark was 400 miles ahead when she lost her rudder off the Cape of Good Hope, and Thermopylae reached London seven days before her. This is a working portrait of a champion.
“The Famous Tea-Clipper Thermopylae”
The real ship Designed by Bernard Waymouth and built by Walter Hood and Co. of Aberdeen for George Thompson's Aberdeen White Star Line, she was launched in 1868 and reached Melbourne on her maiden voyage in a record 63 days. After the tea and Australian wool trades she passed to Canadian owners and then to Portugal, and in 1907 she was towed out to sea off the Tagus and sunk by torpedo.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich
Merchant ships · Painting
Three-masted merchant ship and two schooners in a heavy sea Unnamed
Three Master and Lumber Schooners in Heavy Seas, early 1850s
Artist Fitz Henry Lane (1804 to 1865)
Where to see it Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester (642.13a)
Medium Oil on canvas
A three-masted merchant ship lifts through a heavy sea as the skies begin to clear, two smaller schooners labouring nearby. There is no disaster here, as the catalogue says, just everyday business on a rough sea, yet Lane lets a small drama begin: the lower sheet of the fore topsail has broken free and is starting to flap, and the crew will soon have to deal with it. In a related painting of 1856 the topsail has blown loose and men are already aloft. The red anchor at the bow is Lane's touch of colour and also true to the red lead primer used on ships' ironwork.
The vessels The ship is an unidentified three-masted merchant vessel of the 1850s; of the two smaller vessels, one is a traditionally rigged schooner and the other carries a square topsail.
Sources fitzhenrylaneonline.org
Image: Fitz Henry Lane, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Painting
Shipping in the Bocca Tigris, including a naval sloop Unnamed
A view into the Bocca Tigris, at the entrance to the Pearl River, China, mid-19th century
Artist Chinese School, 19th century
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC1783)
Medium Oil on canvas
Every ship bound for Canton passed through the Bocca Tigris, the Tiger's Mouth, where the forts of Annanghoy and South Wantong faced each other across a channel only 750 yards wide. An unidentified Chinese artist shows the lower reach of the river crowded with local and European shipping, a western ship coming down from Canton in the distance, and in the foreground a British vessel, perhaps a Royal Navy sloop of about 18 guns, flying the blue peter as she prepares to sail. Long mislabelled as shipping off Hong Kong, the view was identified by comparison with a very similar picture of about 1860 in the Hong Kong Museum of Art.
“the forts forming the ‘teeth’ of the ‘tiger's mouth’”
The vessels The shipping is unnamed: Chinese junks and European vessels in the lower Pearl River, including a British ship that may be a Royal Navy sloop of about 18 guns; after the Treaty of Nanking in 1842 European traders in these waters needed naval protection from pirates.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, where the original is kept. Photo: TxllxT, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Merchant ships · Print
A French ship leaving the harbour of Ancona Unnamed
View of the Port of Ancona (Vue du Port d'Ancone), mid-19th century
Artist After Ambroise-Louis Garneray (1783 to 1857)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (PAI0002)
Medium Aquatint, proof before letters
Garneray had been a corsair under Surcouf and spent years in British prison hulks before he became a painter, and his many port views of France and the Mediterranean were published as aquatints in Paris. This one, issued by the print sellers Hocquart of the Rue Saint-Jacques, looks over the Adriatic port of Ancona from above the citadel. A French ship stands out of the harbour with the long mole behind her. Garneray exaggerated the height of the headland and old town, and the square tower seen between the ship's fore and main masts is the Arch of Trajan, then a landmark on the mole and now well inland amid reclaimed ground.
The vessels The vessel is an unnamed French sailing ship leaving the Adriatic port of Ancona.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, where the original is kept. Photo: TxllxT, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Merchant ships · Painting
Southern Cross (clipper, 1851) Named ship
Clipper Ship "Southern Cross" in Boston Harbor, 1851
Artist Fitz Henry Lane (1804 to 1865)
Where to see it Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts (M18639)
Medium Oil on canvas
Lane painted the Southern Cross in 1851, when she had just been finished at a South Boston yard, and the picture carries all the optimism of that moment. Her owners named her after what they thought the most beautiful constellation of the southern sky, and they expected fast passages to match. The sea did not oblige: contrary winds, dismastings and a fire kept her from the quick runs they hoped for, though she was remembered for sailing from San Francisco to Hong Kong in a record thirty-two days. Lane gives us the ship before any of it, new and full of promise in her home harbour.
The real ship Built in 1851 by E. and H. O. Briggs at South Boston for Baker and Morrill of Boston, the medium clipper was captured and burned by the Confederate cruiser Florida in June 1863.
Sources fitzhenrylaneonline.org
Image: Fitz Henry Lane, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Painting
Samuel Lawrence (packet ship) Named ship
"Samuel Lawrence" (Ship Samuel Lawrence Picking up a Boston Pilot), 1851
Artist Fitz Henry Lane (1804 to 1865)
Where to see it Peabody Essex Museum, Salem (M9218)
Medium Oil
A narrative ship portrait for readers who knew the language of flags. The blue star-studded pilot jack at the fore asks for a pilot, and a pilot schooner waits under shortened sail just astern. At the mizzen, four signal flags in the Elford code spell out the ship's number. When researchers checked them against the Boston Harbour Telegraph they first read the ship Ganges, until they realised Lane had painted the whole hoist upside down, probably copying a sketch made without marking top or bottom. The slip, as the catalogue says, adds an endearing human touch.
“In other words, Lane had painted the official hoist upside down!”
The real ship Samuel Lawrence was a packet ship; the Lane catalogue cites Duncan McLean's contemporary account of her construction in The Atlas of Boston. Her Elford signal number was 3246.
Sources fitzhenrylaneonline.org · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, where the original is kept. Photo: Fletcher6, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Merchant ships · Print
Flying Cloud Named ship
Clipper Ship "Flying Cloud", 1852
Artist After James E. Buttersworth (1817 to 1894); drawn on stone by Eliphalet M. Brown Jr.; published by Nathaniel Currier
Where to see it The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (63.550.25)
Medium Hand-coloured lithograph
Currier issued this print to celebrate a record: in 1851 the Flying Cloud had sailed from New York round Cape Horn to San Francisco in 89 days and 21 hours, anchor to anchor. Prints like this were cheap enough for ordinary homes, and they carried Buttersworth's portrait of the ship far beyond the waterfront. Behind the image is a story the lithograph could not show: the ship's navigator was the captain's wife, Eleanor Creesy, one of the first navigators to exploit the sailing directions of Matthew Fontaine Maury. The ship later beat her own record.
The real ship Built by Donald McKay at East Boston and launched in 1851, the Flying Cloud set the New York to San Francisco record under Josiah Perkins Creesy, with Eleanor Creesy as navigator, and bettered it in 1854 with 89 days 8 hours. Later owned in Britain, she went ashore on the Beacon Island Bar at Saint John, New Brunswick, in 1874 and was burned for her iron and copper fastenings.
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, where the original is kept. Photo: Arad, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Merchant ships · Print
Hurricane (clipper, 1851) Named ship
Clipper Ship "Hurricane" of New York, 1852
Artist Frances Flora Bond Palmer (1812 to 1876); published by Nathaniel Currier
Where to see it The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (63.550.291)
Medium Hand-coloured lithograph
Fanny Palmer, born in Leicester and working in New York, is credited as the artist of this portrait of the Hurricane, published by Currier in 1852. The ship was built for speed, with slender lines, tall masts and square sails, and she met her namesake early: on her first voyage to San Francisco in 1852 a squall damaged her and forced her into Rio de Janeiro for repairs. Afterwards she served chiefly in the China tea trade. The print shows her as her owners wished her seen, whole and fast.
The real ship Built in 1851 by Isaac C. Smith at Hoboken, New Jersey, the three-masted Hurricane was damaged by a squall on her first voyage to San Francisco in 1852, repaired at Rio de Janeiro, and afterwards served chiefly in the China tea trade.
Sources The Met
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, where the original is kept. Photo: Arad, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Merchant ships · Print
Sovereign of the Seas (clipper, 1852) Named ship
Clipper Ship "Sovereign of the Seas", 1852
Artist Eliphalet M. Brown Jr. (1816 to 1886); published by Nathaniel Currier
Where to see it The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (63.550.20)
Medium Hand-coloured lithograph
Donald McKay's Sovereign of the Seas was built in 1852 at East Boston with, in the Met's words, the largest and sharpest bow and stern of any vessel then built, 265 feet long overall as the print's own text states. Soon after her maiden voyage to San Francisco she was chartered by the Black Ball Line of Liverpool for the Australian trade, and she set a world record as the fastest sailing ship that stood for decades. Currier's firm was eager to meet the public's appetite for pictures of such ships, and prints like this were an inexpensive way to decorate a home.
“the largest and sharpest bow and stern of any vessel then built”
The real ship Built by Donald McKay at East Boston in 1852, 265 feet long, she was chartered after her maiden voyage to San Francisco by the Black Ball Line of Liverpool to carry passengers and cargo to and from Australia, and set a world speed record for a sailing ship.
Sources The Met
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, where the original is kept. Photo: Arad, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Merchant ships · Drawing
Lizzie Webber (emigrant ship) Named ship
Departure of the Lizzie Webber, the first Emigrant ship from Sunderland to Australia, 1852
Artist Poulson
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (PAD6452)
Medium Graphite and sepia ink
In 1852, the year Thomas Woolner sailed for Australia and Ford Madox Brown began The Last of England, a draughtsman named Poulson drew the departure of the Lizzie Webber, the first emigrant ship from Sunderland to Australia. The drawing, in graphite and sepia ink, is linked to the Illustrated London News of 14 August 1852. Emigration from England was then at a peak, with over 350,000 people leaving that year. Where Brown painted the private grief of leaving, this sheet records a port's public occasion.
The real ship The Lizzie Webber sailed from Sunderland for Australia in 1852 as the first emigrant ship from that port.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Merchant ships · Painting
Emigrant ship leaving England Unnamed
The Last of England, 1852 to 1855
Artist Ford Madox Brown (1821 to 1893)
Where to see it Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham
Medium Oil on panel
The ship here is felt rather than seen: a rail hung with cabbages as provisions for the long voyage, a crowded deck, an umbrella glistening with sea spray, and the white cliffs of Dover disappearing behind. Brown began the picture in 1852, moved by the departure of his friend the sculptor Thomas Woolner for Australia, and he based the emigrant couple on himself and his wife Emma, a baby's small hand just visible from her cloak. He painted largely outdoors on cold days, delighted when the weather turned his hand blue, so that the chill would show in the flesh. He called it the parting scene in its fullest tragic development.
“the parting scene in its fullest tragic development”
The vessels An unnamed emigrant sailing ship of the 1850s leaving England, cabbages hung from her rail as provisions for the long voyage.
Sources Wikipedia · smarthistory.org · Fitzwilliam Museum
Image: Ford Madox Brown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Painting
Merchant ships and brig in Boston Harbor at sunset Unnamed
Boston Harbor, after 1853
Artist Fitz Henry Lane (1804 to 1865)
Where to see it Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (66.339)
Medium Oil on canvas
Lane knew Boston Harbor from the lithography studios that overlooked it, and here he turns a busy commercial port into what his cataloguers call poems of stillness, silence and light. The viewer sits low on the water, as if in a small boat just behind two men rowing into the path of the sunset, so the merchant and packet ships loom up as great hulls and towers of sail, lined along a processional corridor that leads the eye to the setting sun. Nothing hurries. The steeple of the First Baptist Church, completed in 1853, stands on the skyline beside the State House dome.
“the hanging moment between day and night, between wind and calm, light and shadow”
The vessels The vessels are unnamed full-rigged merchant and packet ships and a brig in Boston Harbor in the 1850s.
Sources fitzhenrylaneonline.org
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where the original is kept. Photo: Beyond My Ken, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Merchant ships · Print
Contest (clipper, 1852) Named ship
Clipper Ship "Contest", 1853
Artist Frances Flora Bond Palmer (1812 to 1876); published by Nathaniel Currier
Where to see it The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (63.550.70)
Medium Hand-coloured lithograph
Fanny Palmer drew the Contest for Currier in 1853, a year after she came from Jacob A. Westervelt's New York yard, and the print was dedicated to his son Daniel, named as her builder: a family's pride pressed into ink. The ship earned it, taking 100 days from New York to San Francisco on her first voyage and coming home in 80. She made many profitable voyages over the next decade before the Confederate raider Alabama destroyed her in 1863. The print keeps her in the brief season when the New York clippers were in their prime.
“dedicated to his son, Daniel D. Westervelt, who is identified as the builder of ‘Contest.’”
The real ship Built in 1852 at Jacob A. Westervelt's yard in New York, the Contest sailed from New York to San Francisco in 100 days and returned in 80; she was destroyed by the CSS Alabama in 1863.
Sources The Met
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, where the original is kept. Photo: Arad, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Merchant ships · Print
Great Republic Named ship
Clipper Ship "Great Republic", 1853
Artist After James E. Buttersworth (1817 to 1894); published by Nathaniel Currier
Where to see it The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (63.550.24)
Medium Hand-coloured lithograph
Currier published this print at the time of the launch, to record the sheer size of Donald McKay's four-masted giant: 335 feet long, four decks, a long black hull and more than 15,000 yards of sail. She was the largest wooden merchant sailing ship built in the United States, launched at East Boston in October 1853 before a huge crowd to the roar of artillery. On 26 December, the day before her maiden voyage, sparks from a bakery fire in New York caught her rigging, and her masts were too tall for the hoses to reach. The print shows ambition at its height.
“Amid the roar of artillery, the music of bands, and the cheers of the multitude”
The real ship Built by Donald McKay at East Boston and launched in October 1853, she burned to the waterline in New York on 26 December 1853. Rebuilt by new owners with a reduced rig and half the crew, she proved fast, carried troops in the Civil War and was lost off Bermuda in 1872.
Sources The Met · massmoments.org · Royal Museums Greenwich
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, where the original is kept. Photo: Arad, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Merchant ships · Print
Sweepstakes (clipper, 1853) Named ship
Clipper Ship "Sweepstakes", 1853
Artist After James E. Buttersworth (1817 to 1894); drawn on stone by Frances Flora Bond Palmer; published by Nathaniel Currier
Where to see it The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (63.550.60)
Medium Hand-coloured lithograph
The Sweepstakes was the last and largest clipper built by the Westervelts of New York, launched in the summer of 1853, and that same year Currier had her on paper, drawn on the stone by the Leicester-born Fanny Palmer after a painting by Buttersworth. The Met notes how such prints celebrated a ship's speed and gave good publicity to her builder, owner and captain; the Sweepstakes was admired for her sleek lines and made two passages between New York and San Francisco in 106 days. Her owners, Chambers and Heiser, were the firm that commissioned Lane's Golden State.
The real ship Built in 1853 by Daniel and Aaron Westervelt of New York for Chambers and Heiser, she went ashore in the Strait of Malacca and was condemned at Batavia in May 1862.
Sources The Met · fitzhenrylaneonline.org
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, where the original is kept. Photo: Arad, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Merchant ships · Painting
Northern Light Named ship
Northern Light, 1853
Artist William Bradford (1823 to 1892)
Where to see it MIT Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts (Hart Nautical Collection)
Medium Oil on canvas
Bradford paints the Boston clipper Northern Light in classic ship portrait profile, every sail drawing, the Stars and Stripes at her stern and signal flags aloft, with a lighthouse on the shore at left and a schooner off her bow. In 1853, the year of the picture, she made the fastest passage then recorded from San Francisco to Boston, 76 days, overtaking her rival Contest off Cape Horn and reaching Boston Light on 29 May, two days ahead of Contest's arrival in New York. The picture was presented to H. O. Briggs by J. Huckins, a portrait of the fastest ship of her season.
The real ship Designed by Samuel Hartt Pook and built by the Briggs Brothers at South Boston in 1851, Northern Light measured 180 feet and 1,021 tons register; under Captain Freeman Hatch her 1853 San Francisco to Boston run set a record for a single-hulled vessel.
Sources Wikipedia · Wikidata · Wikimedia Commons
Image: William Bradford, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Painting
Clipper ship, packet ship and coasting craft off Salem Unnamed
Salem Harbor, 1853
Artist Fitz Henry Lane (1804 to 1865)
Where to see it Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (64.465)
Medium Oil on canvas
Painted for Nathaniel Silsbee Jr., of a leading Salem shipping family, this is perhaps Lane's most fanciful gathering of shipping. A clipper under studding sails and a packet ship with painted false gunports sail two or three miles off Salem, although both were too deep to berth in its small harbour; they were really Boston ships, perhaps with Salem owners. Around them are the brigs, schooners, a loaded sloop and a dory that suited the port. The catalogue notes that the wind blows from three directions at once, and that Lane signed his initials and the date on a sail in the foreground.
“There will be a scramble to take in sail if a sea breeze develops!”
The vessels Salem had been one of the busiest ports in America early in the nineteenth century, largely through the China trade, but by 1853 its fortunes were in decline and its merchants needed the deeper port of Boston for large ships. The vessels here are not named.
Sources fitzhenrylaneonline.org · MFA Boston
Image: Fitz Henry Lane, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Painting
Winged Arrow and Southern Cross Named ship
The Ships "Winged Arrow" and "Southern Cross" in Boston Harbor, 1853
Artist Fitz Henry Lane (1804 to 1865)
Where to see it Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio (1971.31)
Medium Oil on canvas
Two Boston clippers stand out of the harbour together, and Lane lets their figureheads introduce them: a sea dragon on the Winged Arrow at right, an eagle on the Southern Cross at left. The water moving around their bows tells you they are under way, a small schooner lies to their left, and the Boston skyline shows in the distance. The picture's first owner was Benjamin Kent Hough, a Gloucester and Boston merchant who imported exotic woods for pianos and fine furniture. It is Lane's second portrait of the Southern Cross, painted two years after the first.
The real ship The Southern Cross was a medium clipper built at South Boston in 1851 by E. and H. O. Briggs for Baker and Morrill and burned by the Confederate cruiser Florida in June 1863. The Winged Arrow was a Boston clipper of the same years, whose construction was described in the Boston Atlas.
Sources fitzhenrylaneonline.org
Image: Fitz Henry Lane, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Print
James Baines (clipper, 1854) Named ship
Clipper ship 'James Baines', 1854
Artist Samuel Walters (1811 to 1882)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (PY8547)
Medium Coloured lithograph
Samuel Walters, one of the best-known painters of the Liverpool school of marine art, drew the James Baines in 1854, the year she was built, and the print's inscription proudly names her one of the Black Ball Line of Australian packets. That phrase carries the whole gold-rush trade: a Donald McKay clipper used to carry troops, emigrants and freight on the Australian route. She lived up to her builder's name, crossing from Boston to Liverpool on her maiden voyage in a record twelve days and six hours, then running from Liverpool to Melbourne in 63 days.
“one of the Black Ball Line of Australian Packets belonging to Messrs James Baines & Co, Liverpool”
The real ship Built by Donald McKay in 1854 and owned by James Baines and Co.'s Black Ball Line, she served as a transport for troops, emigrants and freight on the Australian route, and an engraving of 1857 shows her carrying troops for India.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · collections.sea.museum · Wikipedia
Merchant ships · Print
Nightingale (clipper, 1851) Named ship
Clipper Ship "Nightingale" getting under weigh off the Battery, New York, 1854
Artist After James E. Buttersworth (1817 to 1894); lithographed by Charles Parsons; published by Nathaniel Currier
Where to see it The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (63.550.18)
Medium Hand-coloured lithograph
The Nightingale was named after the Swedish soprano Jenny Lind, and this print plays the compliment through: the clipper sails in New York harbour with a glimpse of the Battery and Castle Garden behind her, the hall where Lind gave two concerts at the start of her American tour in 1850. Drawn when the ship called at New York in May 1854, after Buttersworth and lithographed by Charles Parsons, it shows her at the height of her fame, when she raced with tea and silk from Shanghai to London. Her later years were darker: in 1861 she was captured off Africa as a slave ship.
“proudly sailing in New York Harbor with a background glimpse of Manhattan's Battery Park and Castle Garden”
The real ship Designed by Samuel Hanscom Jr. and launched at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1851, she carried gold seekers to Sydney and then tea from Shanghai to London. Sold at Rio de Janeiro in 1860, she was used in the slave trade; in April 1861 boats from USS Saratoga captured her off Cabinda and freed more than 900 people held below decks. She then carried supplies for the Union blockade and from 1865 laid telegraph cable for Western Union.
Sources The Met · fitzhenrylaneonline.org
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, where the original is kept. Photo: Arad, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Merchant ships · Print
Racer (clipper) Named ship
Clipper Ship "Racer", 1854
Artist After James E. Buttersworth (1817 to 1894); Charles Parsons; published by Nathaniel Currier
Where to see it The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (63.550.19)
Medium Hand-coloured lithograph
Nathaniel Currier produced dozens of lithographs of American clipper ships for a public hungry for marine pictures. This one follows a painting by Buttersworth, whom the Met counts among the best American ship portraitists of the century, a master of the illusion of a ship moving through the waves. Two years after publication, in May 1856, Racer sank off the east coast of Ireland on passage from Liverpool to New York. All five hundred passengers and crew were rescued, so the print became the portrait of a ship whose loss ended well for everyone aboard.
The real ship Racer was an American clipper ship; in May 1856, bound from Liverpool to New York, she was lost off the east coast of Ireland, and all of the roughly five hundred passengers and crew were rescued.
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, where the original is kept. Photo: Arad, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Merchant ships · Painting
Golden State Named ship
The Golden State Entering New York Harbor, 1854
Artist Fitz Henry Lane (1804 to 1865)
Where to see it The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1974.33)
Medium Oil on canvas
This was a commission from the Golden State's owners, the New York firm of Chambers and Heiser, who had already brought Lane to New York the year before to paint their Sweepstakes. He gives them their new clipper entering New York, the city's skyline seen from the New Jersey shore and a steamer just beyond her bow. Her name speaks of the California trade, the long run round Cape Horn in the gold-rush years. The wind-whipped waves patterned diagonally across the canvas show Lane's debt to Robert Salmon, and he signed his full name, which he did on only one other known painting.
The real ship The Golden State was a clipper built in New York in 1852 for Chambers and Heiser and used on the route round Cape Horn to California.
Merchant ships · Print
Comet (clipper, 1851) Named ship
Clipper Ship "Comet" of New York in a Hurricane off Bermuda on her Voyage from New York to San Francisco, October 1852, 1855
Artist After Charles Parsons (1821 to 1910); published by Nathaniel Currier
Where to see it The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (63.550.21)
Medium Hand-coloured lithograph
Most clipper prints show perfection. This one shows peril: the Comet of New York, storm-tossed almost to capsizing in a hurricane off Bermuda in October 1852, her sails and masts damaged, on her way to San Francisco. The sequel made it heroic, for after repairs she made an excellent run round Cape Horn in 79 days. Built by William H. Webb for Bucklin and Crane and launched in July 1851 for the California gold-rush trade, she later sailed in the China tea trade. The print lets us feel what that trade cost in fear and seamanship.
The real ship Built by William H. Webb in New York for Bucklin and Crane and launched in July 1851 for the California trade, the Comet was damaged in a hurricane off Bermuda in 1852, then reached San Francisco round Cape Horn in 79 days; she was later used in the China tea trade.
Sources The Met
Image: After Charles Parsons, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Print
Red Jacket (clipper, 1853) Named ship
Clipper Ship "Red Jacket": In the Ice off Cape Horn, on Her Passage from Australia to Liverpool, August 1854, 1855
Artist Charles Parsons (1821 to 1910), after Joseph B. Smith; published by Nathaniel Currier
Where to see it The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (63.550.17)
Medium Hand-coloured lithograph
Red Jacket ranks among the largest and fastest American clippers ever built, and on her first crossing from New York to Liverpool she set the sailing record of 13 days, 1 hour and 25 minutes, dock to dock. Chartered by the White Star Line, she reached Melbourne in 69 days, then came home round Cape Horn, where, as this print records, she was held up for four days in the ice in August 1854. She still reached Liverpool in seventy-three days with all her passengers and some 45,000 ounces of gold. The print turns the delay into beauty and peril, the ship's sails set among floes and towering bergs.
The real ship Designed by Samuel Hartt Pook and built by George Thomas at Rockland, Maine, launched in 1853, Red Jacket was named after the Seneca leader Sagoyewatha. Bought by Liverpool investors in 1854, she served the Australian emigrant trade until 1866, was sold to Portugal, and from 1872 carried lumber from Quebec to London.
Image: Charles Parsons, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Painting
Transatlantic packet ship towed by a steam tug Unnamed
New York Harbor, c. 1855
Artist Fitz Henry Lane (1804 to 1865)
Where to see it Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (48.446)
Medium Oil on canvas
At the centre of this big canvas a steam tug guides a large packet ship out into the bay to begin a transatlantic crossing, riding high because her hold is probably stuffed with buoyant cotton. Around her Lane assembles the whole working port: a packet brig, a coastal passenger steamer, a Hudson River sloop, a Whitehall boat that served as the harbour's water taxi. The sails hang slack in the still late-afternoon air and only steam and oars are moving. Sail was at its zenith; steam was just proving itself. Lane may have painted a prophecy.
“Has Lane mixed some prophecy into his composition?”
The vessels The packet ship is unnamed; the catalogue describes her as a large packet bound out on a transatlantic voyage, riding high with a probable cargo of cotton, beside a packet brig in the coastal trade.
Sources fitzhenrylaneonline.org
Image: Fitz Henry Lane, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Painting
Star Light (clipper, 1854) Named ship
"Starlight" in Harbor, c. 1855
Artist Fitz Henry Lane (1804 to 1865)
Where to see it Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri (2002.8)
Medium Oil on canvas
Lane shows a new ship doing something only sailors notice: drying her sails. Her jibs are partly raised and her square sails hang loose in their gear, because damp canvas furled away would mildew, and some of it was nearly an eighth of an inch thick and all of it stitched by hand. It is a quiet, knowing picture of seamanship in a busy harbour, with a tug bringing a ship in, sloops at work and men standing on the wharf, among them Lane's only known depiction of an African-American man outside a family group in his View of Baltimore.
“Some of the cotton canvas is almost one-eighth inch thick, and all of the sails are hand stitched”
The real ship The Star Light was a clipper of 1,153 tons built at South Boston in 1854 for the Boston firm of Baker and Morrill.
Sources fitzhenrylaneonline.org · Google Arts & Culture
Image: Fitz Henry Lane, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Print
Dreadnought (packet, 1853) Named ship
Clipper Ship "Dreadnought" off Tuskar Light, 12 1/2 Days from New York on her Celebrated Passage into Dock of Liverpool in 13 Days 11 Hours, December 1854, 1856
Artist After Duncan McFarlane; drawn on stone by Charles Parsons; published by Nathaniel Currier
Where to see it The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (63.550.23)
Medium Hand-coloured lithograph
The title reads like a ship's log, and that is the point: twelve and a half days out of New York, the Dreadnought is already passing Tuskar Rock lighthouse off the south-east coast of Ireland, on her way to docking in Liverpool in 13 days 11 hours. She sailed for the Red Cross Line under Captain Samuel Samuels, to whom the print is dedicated, carrying corn, cotton and other raw materials east and emigrants and manufactured goods west. Currier's print, after a painting by the British artist Duncan McFarlane, made sure shippers and passengers would remember the name of so fast a ship.
The real ship The Dreadnought carried passengers and cargo for the Red Cross Line between New York and Liverpool under Captain Samuel Samuels; between 1854 and 1856 she made more than twenty voyages, and in December 1854 crossed in less than thirteen days.
Sources The Met · Royal Museums Greenwich
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, where the original is kept. Photo: Arad, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Merchant ships · Painting
Leonard (1854) Named ship
The ship Leonard, 1859
Artist Style of William John Huggins
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC3445)
Medium Oil on canvas
The Leonard heads out to sea in a strong breeze, seen broadside from starboard with figures along her deck, white cliffs and a lighthouse behind her and another ship coming in on the right. She was a purpose-built Mediterranean trader. The picture is signed and dated 1859, which puts it after Huggins's death in 1845 unless the date is a misreading for 1839, so the museum catalogues it as in his style. It is a ship portrait in the manner of a painter whose work is valued as a record of the shipping of his day.
“Her dark, sleek hull and broad spread of sail almost fill the canvas”
The real ship The Leonard was a purpose-built Mediterranean trading ship, probably sold abroad in the early 1860s.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Image: Style of William John Huggins, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Painting
A sailing boat in the roads of Elsinore Unnamed
An Early Summer Morning in the Roads of Elsinore (Tidlig sommermorgen på Helsingørs rhed), 1860
Artist Carl Frederik Sørensen (1818 to 1879)
Where to see it Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen (KMS821)
Medium Oil on canvas
Carl Frederik Sørensen studied perspective under Eckersberg, went on sea voyages almost every year and took a special interest in the weather and its effects on the sea. Besides storms and naval actions he painted idyllic scenes full of charm and atmosphere, and this large canvas of 1860 is one of them: an early summer morning in the roads of Elsinore. The museum records a sailing boat and Kronborg Castle in the scene.
The vessels An unnamed sailing boat in the roads off Elsinore.
Image: Carl Frederik Sørensen, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Painting
El Dorado (emigrant ship) Named in the picture
The Last of England (second version), 1860
Artist Ford Madox Brown (1821 to 1893)
Where to see it The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (bought from Miss Mary Slater, Marlay Fund, 1917)
Medium Oil
Brown's second version of his emigration picture, painted in 1860 and bought from him that year by Colonel W. J. Gillum, is one of two replicas he was asked to make, so admired was the original. The lifeboat behind the couple carries the ship's name, El Dorado, the legendary country of gold: perhaps an ironic nod to Woolner, whose departure for the Australian gold fields had inspired the picture and who came home no better off. Brown painted in the open air on dreary days to catch the peculiar light of a dull day at sea. The picture born of professional failure became his first major success.
“the peculiar look of light all round, which objects have on a dull day at sea”
The vessels The El Dorado, named on the lifeboat, stands for the emigrant ships of the 1850s; no specific real vessel is identified.
Sources Fitzwilliam Museum · Wikipedia
Image: Ford Madox Brown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Painting
Blackwall frigate Unnamed
A Blackwall frigate off the Cape, 1863
Artist Frederick Tudgay
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC2380)
Medium Oil on canvas
'Blackwall frigates' was the popular name for the last generation of sailing East Indiamen, designed and built by the Green family at their Blackwall yard in the 1840s for the East Indies and Australian trades, and so called for their lines and speed. Tudgay paints one off the Cape. Along her side runs a band of painted ports, though she carried no guns on her upper deck: perhaps still meant to deter pirates in Eastern waters, but above all a decorative tradition, later most associated with Devitt and Moore. It is the last flowering of the sailing East Indiaman.
“a decorative tradition, finally most associated with the shipping firm of Devitt & Moore”
The vessels Blackwall frigates were the last generation of sailing East Indiamen, designed and built by the Green family at Blackwall in the 1840s for the East Indies and Australian trades, often with painted ports instead of guns.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, where the original is kept. Photo: TxllxT, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Merchant ships · Painting
Antelope (brig, 1843) Named ship
Brig "Antelope" in Boston Harbor, 1863
Artist Fitz Henry Lane (1804 to 1865)
Where to see it Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (48.449)
Medium Oil on canvas
Lane painted Antelope twenty years after she left Boston and eleven years after she was lost, so the picture is a memorial rather than a record. The Lane catalogue suggests it was commissioned by a relative of her first master, Captain Philip Dumaresq, who had died in 1861, and that the man in the yawl boat, with his telltale sideburns, may be Dumaresq himself. Lane probably worked from a Chinese export painting of the brig, setting her against a Boston skyline of the mid-1840s, the city as her captain would have known it.
The real ship Built at East Boston in 1843 by Samuel Hall for Russell and Company, under the eye of Robert Bennett Forbes, Antelope was an exceptionally fast brig that spent her whole career smuggling opium into China and never returned home. Dismasted in a typhoon in 1848 and rerigged as a barque, she was wrecked on a reef near Wusong in 1852.
Sources fitzhenrylaneonline.org · MFA Boston
Image: Fitz Henry Lane, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Painting
Fidelia (Black Ball Line packet, 1845) Named ship
The packet 'Fidelia', c. 1863 to 1865
Artist British School, 19th century
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC3341)
Medium Oil on canvas
The painter has caught the Fidelia doing what a packet did at the end of a crossing: shortening sail as she nears land, the courses on her fore and main masts clewed up and the royals reefed, a mountainous coast rising on the left. Her name is on her bow and on the pennant at her maintop, and the Black Ball house flag flies at her foretop. The picture is dated to the American Civil War years by a small detail, a 35-star American flag, in use only from July 1863 to July 1865. A packet launched in 1845, still at sea two decades on.
The real ship Launched in 1845, the Fidelia sailed in the Black Ball Line, which ran transatlantic packets until 1878.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich
Image: British School, 19th century, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Painting
Maidstone (1839) Named ship
The Blackwall frigate Maidstone at sea, 1869
Artist H. Callow
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC3467)
Medium Oil on board
The Maidstone sails through a moderately choppy sea under nearly full canvas, the red ensign at her mizzen: by then it was flown only by the British merchant marine, the Royal Navy having given it up in 1864. A Union flag flies at her fore, signal pennants stream from the mizzen and a lifeboat hangs in davits at her stern. Ahead of her a small junk with Chinese battened lugsails places the scene in Eastern waters, quite possibly China, with cliffs and a mountain far off on the left. It is the Blackwall frigate at work on the long routes east.
The real ship The museum records the Maidstone as a ship of 1839. Blackwall frigates were the last generation of British sailing East Indiamen, built for the East Indies and Australian trades.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, where the original is kept. Photo: TxllxT, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Merchant ships · Painting
A sailing ship entering Christiania, with a full-rigged ship at anchor off Kolsås Unnamed
From the Inlet of Oslo (Innseilingen til Christiania), 1874
Artist Hans Gude (1825 to 1903)
Where to see it Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo (NG.M.00262)
Medium Oil on canvas
Gude, by then a professor in Karlsruhe, painted the approach to the Norwegian capital in a sea breeze: small craft and glittering waves lead the eye to a dominating sailing ship, with Akershus Fortress behind and a full-rigged ship anchored before Kolsås in the distance. A puff of smoke on the horizon announces the age of steam. The museum adds a detail: Gude's brother built model ships as a hobby, and Gude used those models as reference when painting ships in his studio.
“Gude's brother built model ships as a hobby, and Gude used these models as reference when working on maritime paintings in his studio.”
The vessels Merchant sailing vessels of the Oslofjord trade in the 1870s, when sail still dominated Norwegian shipping but steamers were appearing.
Sources Nasjonalmuseet · Wikidata
Merchant ships · Painting
Large ships at anchor in the harbour of Copenhagen and a small boat Unnamed
The Port of Copenhagen (Το λιμάνι της Κοπεγχάγης), 1874
Artist Ioannis Altamouras (1852 to 1878)
Where to see it National Gallery of Greece, Athens (Π.2087, bequest of Antonios Benakis)
Medium Oil on canvas
Painted in Copenhagen in 1874, the year the Impressionists held their first group exhibition in Paris, by a young Greek painter who had gone north with a scholarship from King George I to study near Carl Frederik Sørensen. The National Gallery describes the misty waterfront of towers, smoking chimneys and big anchored ships as a dark horizontal line cutting the picture in two: one third sea, where a dark boat moves, and two thirds of restless cloud. Sent to the Olympia exhibition in Athens in 1875, it won the second award. Altamouras died of tuberculosis at 26.
The vessels The ships are unnamed vessels at anchor in the port of Copenhagen.
Sources nationalgallery.gr · Wikipedia · Wikipedia (EL)
Image: Ioannis Altamouras, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Print
Three Brothers (ex-Vanderbilt, 1855) Named ship
Clipper Ship Three Brothers, 2972 Tons: The Largest Sailing Ship in the World, 1875
Artist Currier and Ives, lithographers and publishers (active 1857 to 1907)
Where to see it The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (63.550.72)
Medium Colour lithograph
Few ships had a stranger career. She was built in New York in 1855 as the Vanderbilt for the Commodore Vanderbilt service from New York to Le Havre, bought by the United States government in 1861 and used in the Civil War against Confederate warships. After 1865 San Francisco merchants bought her, renamed her Three Brothers and put her in the trade between San Francisco, New York and Liverpool. Currier and Ives show her speeding before the wind with all thirty-one sails set, and the inscription proclaims her the largest sailing ship in the world.
The real ship Built in New York in 1855 as the Vanderbilt for the Commodore Vanderbilt service to Le Havre, purchased by the US government in 1861 for Civil War service, and after 1865 renamed Three Brothers by San Francisco merchants for the San Francisco, New York and Liverpool trade.
Image: Currier and Ives, lithographers and publishers, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Merchant ships · Painting
A square-rigged sailing ship, a small steamer and a sailing boat off Grimstad Unnamed
View of Grimstad (Fra Grimstad), 1875
Artist Peder Balke (1804 to 1887)
Where to see it Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo (NG.M.02614)
Medium Oil on wood
Peder Balke, a pupil of J. C. Dahl, is known for portraying the Norwegian landscape in a romantic and dramatic manner, yet this small late panel of 1875 is calm and clear. Off the low shore of Grimstad on Norway's south coast a square-rigged ship lies with her sails set on still water, a small sailing boat nearby, while a little steamer trails smoke along the coast. Balke signed it with his name and the year in the corner. Sail and steam share the same quiet harbour approach.
The vessels The vessels are unnamed: a square-rigged sailing ship, a small steamer and small craft off the port of Grimstad.
Sources Nasjonalmuseet · Wikipedia
Merchant ships · Painting
Anglo Saxon (clipper, 1854) Named ship
The clipper Anglo Saxon in The Downs with a Deal lugger, mid- to late 19th century
Artist Samuel Walters (1811 to 1882)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC3195)
Medium Oil on canvas
The Downs, the roadstead off Deal sheltered by the Goodwin Sands, was where merchant ships waiting for an easterly wind into the Channel gathered, at times in their hundreds. The Deal boatmen, famous for their seamanship and bravery, launched from the open beach to carry provisions, mail and passengers out to them, and the Deal luggers were the largest of their boats. Samuel Walters pairs the clipper Anglo Saxon with one of these luggers: the ocean-going ship and the small craft that met her off the English coast. It is a picture of a long voyage touching home.
The real ship The museum records the vessel as the clipper Anglo Saxon of 1854, shown in the Downs with a Deal lugger.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Merchant ships · Painting
Palestine (packet, 1854) Named ship
The ship Palestine, mid- to late 19th century
Artist Samuel Walters (1811 to 1882)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC3533)
Medium Oil on canvas
An American packet in a Liverpool painter's hands: the Palestine sails broadside on under full canvas, the flag of the United States at her stern and the house flag of the Black Cross Line at her main, crewmen busy in the bow and a coastline faint in the distance on the far left. Samuel Walters, born in London, made his name in Liverpool, where he began exhibiting in 1830, and his work was popular in North America as well as at home. The Palestine was a transatlantic packet, built by Jacob and Westervelt in 1854 for the Black Cross Line.
The real ship A transatlantic packet built by Jacob and Westervelt in 1854 for the Black Cross Line.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Merchant ships · Painting
Cutty Sark Named ship
The clipper Cutty Sark, late 19th to early 20th century
Artist John Fraser
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC3277)
Medium Oil painting
This is a portrait of the ship that outlived her whole class. The tea clippers were built to bring the annual crop home first, since the first ship in could command a far higher price, and their large sail area and sleek lines were the price of that race. The Cutty Sark was the finest of them, yet she carried tea for only eight years before the Suez Canal, which sailing ships could not use, made her kind redundant. A painting of her under sail is a picture of brief perfection, made more poignant because the ship herself still stands in Greenwich.
The real ship Launched at Dumbarton in 1869, the Cutty Sark carried tea from China for eight years, then enjoyed a decade of success in the Australian wool trade. After years of decline under other owners from 1895 she was bought and preserved by Captain Wilfred Dowman in 1922, and since 1957 she has rested in a purpose-built dry dock at Greenwich.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich
Merchant ships · Painting
Cutty Sark Named ship
The 'Cutty Sark' at Sunset, 1920 to 1939
Artist John Everett (1876 to 1949)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC3278)
Medium Oil on canvas
By the 1930s Everett was experimenting with unusual compositions, rhythmic shapes and strong contrasting colour, and he turned that new language on the most famous clipper of all. The waves here are painted in an Art Deco manner and the sunlight falls in straight yellow bars that reach towards the edges of the canvas. The effect is less a ship portrait than a hymn: the old tea clipper transfigured by a modern eye, by a painter who had himself signed on as crew in sailing ships and had seen her at sea.
The real ship The Cutty Sark was launched at Dumbarton in 1869 for the China tea trade and later worked the Australian wool run. Preserved from 1922, she survives in dry dock at Greenwich.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, where the original is kept. Photo: TxllxT, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Merchant ships · Painting
Cutty Sark Named ship
The 'Cutty Sark' and a Tug, 1921
Artist John Everett (1876 to 1949)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC4131)
Medium Oil on canvas
Everett sailed as a working seaman and had seen the Cutty Sark at sea under her Portuguese name, so this is a painter's farewell to a ship he knew. She rides the crest of a wave in full sail, lit against an orange sky, while a tug labours in the dark trough below, its smoke trailing into the sea. The museum reads it as past, present and future in one frame: the sailing ship glorified, the steam tug toiling, the cross of its foremast hinting at present suffering. The stylised waves owe something to Hokusai.
The real ship Built for the China tea trade in 1869, the Cutty Sark later excelled in the Australian wool trade, was sold to Portuguese owners in 1895 and renamed Ferreira, and was rescued by Captain Dowman in 1922. She was placed in dry dock at Greenwich in 1954 as the last surviving British merchant clipper.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, where the original is kept. Photo: TxllxT, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Merchant ships · Print
New World (packet ship, 1846) Named ship
United States Packet Ship New World, 1404 tons register, built at Boston 1846 by Donald McKay, original undated; reproduction printed 1962
Artist Samuel Walters (1811 to 1882)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (PAF7739)
Medium Colour reproduction print (1962) of a painting
Before Donald McKay built his famous clippers, he built packets, and the New World of 1846 was one of them, a ship of 1,404 tons registered at Boston. Walters shows her at sea with all her sails set, the flags of the Blue Swallowtail Line at fore and main and the American flag at the mizzen, other sailing ships on either side and land far off on the left. The museum holds the picture only as a reproduction printed in 1962, but it preserves Walters's portrait of a ship from the transatlantic packet trade.
The real ship Built at Boston in 1846 by Donald McKay, the New World was a packet ship of 1,404 tons register flying the flags of the Blue Swallowtail Line.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, where the original is kept. Photo: TxllxT, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Merchant ships · Painting
Ariel and Taeping Named ship
The Tea Clipper Race of 1866 Between the Ariel and Taeping, undated
Artist Montague Dawson (1895 to 1973)
Where to see it Barry Art Museum, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia (2024.1)
Medium Oil on canvas
Dawson grew up in Southampton and was mentored by the marine painter Charles Napier Hemy, and here he takes up the most famous race of the tea-clipper age. Ariel and Taeping, both built by Robert Steele and Co. of Greenock, left Foochow at the end of May 1866 and, after a passage of more than 14,000 miles, were reported heading up the English Channel together. Ariel was ahead when the tugs took them in tow off Deal, but the tide at the docks decided it: Taeping docked 28 minutes before her, and the prize was shared between the two ships by agreement.
The real ship Both ships were built by Robert Steele and Co. at Greenock: Taeping in 1863, Ariel in 1865. Taeping was wrecked near Ladd Reef in 1871, and Ariel was lost in 1872.
Sources barryart.emuseum.com · rehs.com · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the Barry Art Museum, Norfolk, Virginia, where the original is kept. Photo: Packer1028, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
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