Steam, Liners and Shipyards
The Great Western riding a tidal wave. The Great Eastern on the stocks at Millwall. Cunard’s Britannia, the Lusitania, the Mauretania, the Titanic and the Olympic. And the shipyards where such ships took shape, from Millwall to the Clyde.
This chapter of Ships in Paintings holds 79 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
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Comet Named ship
PS Comet, 1816
Artist Alexander Nasmyth (1758 to 1840)
Where to see it Science Museum, London (1903-43)
Medium Oil on canvas
A small canvas, about 18 by 26 centimetres, records one of the first steamboats in Europe to carry paying passengers. Nasmyth shows the Comet plying on the Firth of Forth in 1816, after her withdrawal from her original service on the Clyde. The painter was the right witness: in October 1788, when Patrick Miller sailed the steamboat designed by William Symington on Dalswinton Loch, Nasmyth was one of the crew. Here his curiosity for engines meets his gift for real places, and the little Comet becomes a quiet beginning of the age of steam at sea.
The real ship Built in the winter of 1811 to 1812 by John and Charles Wood of Port Glasgow for Henry Bell, with an engine by John Robertson of Glasgow, the Comet began a regular passenger service on the Clyde in August 1812, the first commercially successful steamboat service in Europe. She was wrecked at Craignish Point near Oban on 15 December 1820.
Sources collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk · Wikipedia
Image: Alexander Nasmyth; photo Science Museum Group, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Ariel (ex-Arrow), or a Liverpool Post Office steam packet Named ship
The Paddle Steamer 'Ariel', 1831
Artist Samuel Walters (1811 to 1882)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC3204)
Medium Oil on canvas
Signed 'Walters and Son 1831', this is steam arriving off the Mersey while sail still rules the water. The paddle steamer passes the shore now known as New Brighton, with the Perch Rock Fort and lighthouse behind, another paddle steamer on the left and smaller sailing boats about her, a furled sail behind her funnel. Greenwich notes that the traditional identification as the Ariel may be wrong: the furled sail and the riser pipe from the boiler safety valves suggest one of the larger Liverpool Post Office packets. Either way, it is an early portrait of the mail steamers that tied Liverpool to Ireland.
The real ship The Arrow was built in 1821 to 1822 and went straight into service at Dover, joined the mail service in April 1825, was taken over by the Admiralty in 1837 and renamed Ariel, and remained the Dover packet until 1846. The museum suggests the painting may instead show a larger Liverpool Post Office packet such as the Lightning, the first Post Office steam packet ordered from Evans of Rotherhithe, in 1820.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
British Queen Named ship
The Steamship 'British Queen', 1838
Artist Samuel Walters (1811 to 1882)
Where to see it Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (WAG 3000)
Medium Oil on canvas
The British Queen was meant to be the first steamship of the British and American Steam Navigation Company and to race Brunel's Great Western to New York in 1838. She fell behind when the firm building her engines went bankrupt, so the company chartered the little Sirius instead, and history remembers the stand-in. When the British Queen finally entered service in 1839 she was the largest passenger ship in the world. Walters, who exhibited from Liverpool, shows her driving through heavy seas under steam and sail, the promise of the first Atlantic steam line.
The real ship Built for the British and American Steam Navigation Company and named for Queen Victoria, she was delayed eighteen months by the liquidation of her engine builder, so the company chartered Sirius in 1838. Entering service in 1839 as the largest passenger ship in the world, she made nine round voyages, was sold to the Belgian government in 1841 and was scrapped in 1844.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Britannia (Cunard paddle steamer, 1840) Named ship
Cunard Liner "Britannia" (Steamer Britannia in a Gale), 1842
Artist Fitz Henry Lane (1804 to 1865)
Where to see it Peabody Essex Museum, Salem (M19323)
Medium Oil on canvas
Britannia met her share of heavy weather, and her crossings to Boston in April 1841 and January 1842 were particularly stormy; Charles Dickens was aboard in the 1842 storm and wrote about it eloquently. Lane painted her labouring in a violent sea, light bursting through the clouds to silhouette hull and rigging. He reportedly offered a version to the Cunard Line, which declined. The Lane catalogue suggests he borrowed from a stormy portrait of the Boston packet Nonantum by the Liverpool painter Samuel Walters, which reached Boston in 1842 with a Cunard steamer riding a mountainous wave on its horizon.
“The firm refused, no doubt feeling that the hazards it depicted were too discouraging for potential passengers.”
The real ship Britannia was built by the Scottish shipbuilder Robert Napier for Samuel Cunard and entered service in 1840, one of four sister ships with Acadia, Caledonia and Columbia, sailing from Liverpool to Boston by way of Halifax.
Sources fitzhenrylaneonline.org · MFA Boston
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
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Sirius Named ship
Paddle Steamer Sirius, 1842
Artist Samuel Walters (1811 to 1882)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (ZBA0734)
Medium Oil on panel
Walters painted the Sirius four years after the voyage that made her famous. A coastal packet built for the London to Cork run, she was chartered by the British and American Steam Navigation Company and left Cork for New York on 4 April 1838, arriving a day ahead of Brunel's Great Western. The panel, signed and dated 1842, gives an ordinary packet the dignity of a record-breaker: she is usually listed as the first holder of what was later called the Blue Riband.
The real ship Built in 1836 by Robert Menzies and Sons of Leith for the Saint George Steam Packet Company's London to Cork service, 703 gross tons, with a two-cylinder engine by Wingate and Co. Chartered for the Atlantic in 1838, she reached New York a day ahead of the Great Western. She struck rocks in fog in Ballycotton Bay, Ireland, on 16 January 1847 and sank.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Great Western Named ship
The SS 'Great Western', c. 1843
Artist Joseph Walter (1783 to 1856)
Where to see it The Postal Museum, London (2004-0134)
Medium Oil on canvas
This portrait of the Great Western was bought by the Post Office in 1989 and passed to the National Postal Museum, a fitting home, for steam made the Atlantic mail regular and her crossings between Bristol and New York set the pattern. Joseph Walter, a Bristol marine painter known for his pictures of Brunel's steamships, painted her several times. Here she is the sturdy wooden ancestor of every Atlantic liner in this chapter, the first steamship purpose-built for crossing the ocean.
The real ship Brunel's first steamship, completed in 1838, she was the largest passenger ship in the world from 1837 to 1839 and held the Blue Riband in both directions at intervals between 1838 and 1845. She was sold to the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company in 1847, served as a troopship in the Crimean War and was broken up on the Thames in 1856.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Great Western Named ship
The 'Great Western' riding a tidal wave, 11 December 1844, 1845
Artist Joseph Walter (1783 to 1856)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC2379)
Medium Oil on canvas
Joseph Walter of Bristol, known for his paintings of Brunel's steamships, shows the Great Western lifted on an enormous sea, a moment the title dates to 11 December 1844. The ship is both heroine and proof: a wooden paddle steamer, the first steamship purpose-built for crossing the Atlantic, riding out weather on her regular service to New York. Greenwich holds this smaller version of a painting in the Bristol City Art Gallery and Museum, a sign of how much the image was wanted.
The real ship Designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and launched at Patterson and Mercer's yard in Bristol on 19 July 1837, she sailed on her maiden voyage from Bristol on 8 April 1838 and reached New York on 23 April. After 45 Atlantic voyages she was sold to the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, served as a troop transport in the Crimean War, and was broken up at Castle's Yard on the Thames in 1856.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Flatboat on the Missouri Unnamed
The Jolly Flatboatmen, 1846
Artist George Caleb Bingham (1811 to 1879)
Where to see it National Gallery of Art, Washington (2015.18.1)
Medium Oil on canvas
Before and alongside the steamboats, the western rivers carried freight on flatboats drifting with the current, and Bingham made their crews heroes. The National Gallery describes sunlight bathing the landscape and warming the men as they float downriver on a flat-bottomed boat, one dancing to music played by his companions while another gazes straight out at us. The museum notes that Bingham's knowledge of life on the Missouri and Mississippi is evident, and the picture keeps the flatboatmen's world alive, joyful and unhurried on the moving water.
The vessels Flatboats were flat-bottomed river craft that carried freight and people downstream with the current on the Missouri and Mississippi.
Sources National Gallery of Art · Wikidata
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Caledonia (Cunard paddle steamer, Britannia class), long identified as Britannia Named ship
The "Britannia" Entering Boston Harbor, 1848
Artist Fitz Henry Lane (1804 to 1865)
Where to see it Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2000.825)
Medium Oil on panel
Long believed to show the arrival of Cunard's Britannia in 1840, the painting has been reread by the Lane catalogue: the blue flag hoist at her main reads 3362, which the Boston signal book gives to her sister Caledonia, and her plain female figurehead fits that name. Either way, it records the service that made Boston the major American port for mail and cargo to and from Europe. Lane shows the paddle steamer entering the harbour under a British ensign with an American courtesy flag at the fore, while two rowing boats full of men salute her, as Bostonians greeted each steamer's arrival with growing enthusiasm.
The real ship The four Britannia-class steamers (Britannia, Acadia, Caledonia and Columbia) were built for Samuel Cunard's British and North American Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, their wooden hulls contracted to Clyde shipyards and their engines designed by Robert Napier, and opened the mail service from Liverpool to Halifax and Boston in July 1840. They were paddle steamers with three masts and full rigging for sails.
Sources fitzhenrylaneonline.org · MFA Boston · Wikipedia
Image: Fitz Henry Lane, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Valkyrien and the tug Hertha Named ship
The Corvette Valkyrien Being Towed by the Steamer Hertha out of Copenhagen, before a Voyage to the East Indies, 1848
Artist Carl Frederik Sørensen (1818 to 1879)
Where to see it Private collection (sold at Sotheby's, London, 9 December 2008, lot 30)
Medium Oil on canvas
Sørensen inscribed the picture with its own story: the corvette Valkyrien, under Captain M. P. Secher, towed by the steamer Hertha as she leaves Copenhagen for the East Indies in January 1848. A pupil of Eckersberg in perspective, Sørensen went to sea almost every year and took a special interest in the weather and its effects on the sea. It is a picture of transition: a sailing warship pulled into open water by the new power of steam. The next year Valkyrien fought at Heligoland, and Sørensen himself sailed with the navy there.
The real ship Valkyrien was a corvette of the Royal Danish Navy built in 1846; she saw action at the Battle of Heligoland on 14 June 1849.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Image: Carl Frederik Sørensen, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Great Britain Named ship
SS 'Great Britain' at Brunswick Wharf, Blackwall, mid-19th century
Artist Richard Ball Spencer (active 1840 to 1874)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (ZBA0738)
Medium Oil on panel
Greenwich calls it a curiously proportioned painting, and the long narrow panel suits its subject: the Great Britain lying at Brunswick Wharf, the London and Blackwall Railway's terminus. She flies the Royal Standard with French and American colours, implying a royal visit, perhaps before her maiden voyage of July 1845. Behind her are the masts of sailing ships in the East India Export Dock and the Blackwall Mast House, the old world of timber and canvas standing behind Brunel's iron hull. Spencer signed it on a barrel floating in the foreground, a painter's wink beside a revolution.
The real ship Built at the Great Western Dockyard, Bristol, and launched in 1843, she was the world's first iron-hulled, screw-propelled steam passenger liner and the first iron steamer to cross the Atlantic, sailing on her maiden voyage to New York on 26 July 1845. After running aground at Dundrum Bay in 1846 she was sold, carried emigrants to Australia from 1852, ended as a hulk in the Falkland Islands and was towed home in 1970; she is now a visitor attraction in Bristol.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Image: Richard Ball Spencer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Wood boat (flatboat carrying fuel for steamboats) Unnamed
The Wood-Boat, 1850
Artist George Caleb Bingham (1811 to 1879)
Where to see it Saint Louis Art Museum (14:1951)
Medium Oil on canvas mounted on board
No steamboat appears here, yet the whole picture waits for one. The late-afternoon sun paints the clouds pink and casts golden light over three men waiting with a load of wood, and the Saint Louis Art Museum explains why it mattered: steamboats burned about 200 cubic feet of wood an hour and had to stop often for fuel. Bingham, known in his lifetime as the Missouri artist, turns this humble trade into a still, luminous scene of patience, a portrait of the people who fed the steam age from the riverbank.
The vessels Wood boats were flat boats loaded with cut timber for sale to passing steamboats, which needed frequent refuelling on the western rivers.
Sources slam.org · Wikidata · Wikipedia
Image: George Caleb Bingham, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Print
Great Britain Named ship
The Iron Steam Ship Great Britain, 3500 Tons, 500 Horse Power, 1852
Artist Thomas Goldsworthy Dutton (1820 to 1891), published by Rudolph Ackermann
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (PAH8914)
Medium Lithograph, hand-coloured
Published by Ackermann on 13 April 1852, the year the Great Britain began her long career on the Australian route after being refloated from Dundrum Bay and refitted, this large coloured lithograph sold the ship to the public by her numbers: iron, 3,500 tons, 500 horse power. Dutton had the reputation of being one of the finest lithographers of nineteenth-century ship portraits, admired for accuracy and detail, and Greenwich holds almost a complete collection of his published prints. Sheets like this carried Brunel's ship into parlours and shipping offices far from any quay.
The real ship Launched at Bristol on 19 July 1843 to Brunel's design, she was the first iron steamer to cross the Atlantic, in 1845. After running aground in Dundrum Bay in 1846 she was refloated in 1847, sold and refitted, and from 1852 carried thousands of emigrants to Australia; she was converted to sail in 1882 and survives in Bristol.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Image: Thomas Goldsworthy Dutton, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Thomas Hunt (steamboat) and America (schooner yacht, 1851) Named ship
The Thomas Hunt and the America, 1852
Artist James Bard (1815 to 1897)
Where to see it The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2019.11)
Medium Oil on canvas
The self-taught Bard devoted his career to portraits of the steamboats and sailing ships of the Hudson and the waters round Manhattan, often commissioned by their builders and operators. The Met singles out this double portrait as an example of his most accomplished work. It sets the steamboat Thomas Hunt beside the yacht America, recently returned to New York after her celebrated victory in August 1851 in the first America's Cup race, and so stages on one canvas the dialogue between sail and steam, both honoured for their innovations of design and technology.
The real ship America was built for a syndicate of New York Yacht Club members, designed by James Rich Steers and George Steers and launched in New York on 3 May 1851; on 22 August 1851 she won the Royal Yacht Squadron's regatta round the Isle of Wight. The Thomas Hunt was a New York steamboat, of which little more is recorded.
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Rip van Winkle Named ship
The Hudson River Steamboat "Rip van Winkle", 1854
Artist James Bard (1815 to 1897)
Where to see it Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (47.1212)
Medium Oil on canvas
James Bard made a career of steamboat portraits, every window and flag in place. He began as a boy, with his twin brother John, painting the steamboat Belona in 1827, and the building boom of the 1850s in New York brought him many commissions from the owners of new vessels. His Rip van Winkle is signed 'Drawn & Painted by James Bard/162 Perry St NY. 1854'. Sometimes called naive art, and made by a painter who died poor and almost forgotten, his steamboat portraits have since become valuable.
The real ship The Rip van Winkle was a Hudson River steamboat of the 1850s, painted by Bard during the New York building boom of that decade.
Sources MFA Boston · Wikipedia
Steam, liners and shipyards · Print
Isaac Newton (Hudson River steamboat, 1846) Named ship
The Low Pressure Steamboat "Isaac Newton" Passing the Palisades on the Hudson River, New York, 1855
Artist Charles Parsons (1821 to 1910), for Nathaniel Currier
Where to see it The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (63.550.57)
Medium Hand-coloured lithograph
Charles Parsons drew the Isaac Newton broadside on as she headed down the Hudson past the rocky cliffs of the Palisades, passengers visible at bow and stern. Built in 1846 and refurbished in 1855 with grand interiors and a hull lengthened to 405 feet, she turned paddle wheels thirty-nine feet across. The print celebrates the grandeur of the Hudson River boats; its sequel was grim, for on 5 December 1863 a boiler explosion destroyed her, and although many passengers survived the fire, nine people died and almost twenty were severely injured.
The real ship Isaac Newton was built in 1846 for passenger and cargo service between New York and Albany, refurbished and lengthened to 405 feet in 1855, and destroyed by a boiler explosion and fire on 5 December 1863.
Sources The Met · Wikimedia Commons
Image: Charles Parsons, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Flatboat moored at a St. Louis wharf Unnamed
Jolly Flatboatmen in Port, 1857
Artist George Caleb Bingham (1811 to 1879)
Where to see it Saint Louis Art Museum (123:1944)
Medium Oil on canvas
Bingham had painted The Jolly Flatboatmen in 1846; here, in 1857, he brings the boatmen into port. A flatboat lies at a wharf in St. Louis and the crew amuse themselves with homespun entertainment, the figures built into a pyramid with a dancer waving a red handkerchief at its centre, a fiddler playing beside him. The museum notes how far these rosy-cheeked river workers are from the violent, rambunctious flatboatmen described by writers of the day: they seem more mischievous than threatening. Along the waterfront behind them a steamboat waits, the river's future beside its past.
The vessels The flatboat was a rectangular, flat-bottomed boat with square ends that carried freight and passengers downstream on America's inland rivers; almost always a one-way vessel, it was usually broken up for lumber at the end of its voyage.
Sources slam.org · Wikipedia · Wikidata
Image: George Caleb Bingham, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Great Eastern (named Leviathan at her launch) Named ship
Building the 'Great Leviathan' (the 'Great Eastern'), c. 1858
Artist William Parrott
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC3384)
Medium Oil on canvas
The Great Eastern lies on the stocks at Millwall, parallel to the Thames into which she would be launched sideways. Greenwich reads the canvas as a continuous narrative: contemporaries described the hull as a mass of bronze, black and brick-tinted metal, and the painter tries to catch exactly that, while barges flying the Royal Standard on the left seem to record Queen Victoria's private visit of 28 June 1858, almost certainly added later. Five times the size of the largest ship then in existence, she was said during building to be mistaken for a fortress. The picture holds all the pride and anxiety of Brunel's last great work.
“a grand tribute to commerce”
The real ship Designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and built by John Scott Russell at Millwall, she was named Leviathan on 3 November 1857, but her sideways launch failed that day and she only took to the water on 31 January 1858; the name Great Eastern was restored in July 1858. She laid the first lasting transatlantic telegraph cable in 1866 and was broken up on Merseyside in 1889.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Image: William Parrott, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Print
Great Eastern Named ship
The Iron Steam Ship "Great Eastern", 22,500 Tons, Constructed under the Direction of I. K. Brunel, F.R.S., D.C.L., Commanded by Capt. William Harrison, 1858
Artist Charles Parsons (1821 to 1910)
Where to see it Library of Congress, Washington (Popular Graphic Arts, LCCN 2002699730)
Medium Hand-coloured lithograph
The title is a list of boasts: iron, 22,500 tons, Brunel, and her commander, Captain William Harrison. Printed in 1858, the year the giant finally took to the water after months of struggle to push her sideways into the Thames, Parsons' lithograph shows her complete and dressed with flags on a smooth sea, small boats crowding round her paddle box. That is how she was meant to be, not as she then lay, still fitting out at Deptford. It is an advertisement for a dream, and the smooth water is the most optimistic thing in it.
The real ship Designed by Brunel and built by John Scott Russell at Millwall, the Great Eastern was launched sideways and finally floated on 31 January 1858, then fitted out at Deptford; far larger than any ship before her, she laid transatlantic telegraph cable in 1866 and was broken up on Merseyside in 1889.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Image: Charles Parsons, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Print
Great Eastern Named ship
The "Great Eastern", c. 1859
Artist Charles Parsons (1821 to 1910), for Currier and Ives
Where to see it Library of Congress, Washington (Popular Graphic Arts, pga.04859)
Medium Lithograph
In 1859, before she had ever crossed the Atlantic, Currier and Ives were already selling New Yorkers a picture of the Great Eastern. The drawing is signed by Charles Parsons, and the print is listed in the Currier and Ives catalogue raisonné. The largest ship in the world had become a celebrity on both sides of the ocean long before she arrived, and a cheap popular print let anyone own her image.
The real ship The Great Eastern, designed by Brunel and floated in 1858, made her first Atlantic crossing as a liner in 1860. Her career as a cable ship made her famous again in 1866 with the first lasting transatlantic telegraph cable.
Sources Library of Congress · Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Image: Charles Parsons, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Print
Great Eastern Named ship
The Great Eastern under weigh July 23rd (escort and other ships introduced being the Terrible the Sphinx the Hawk and the Caroline), c. 1860
Artist After Robert Charles Dudley (1826 to 1909); Day and Son, lithographers, with Thomas Picken
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (PAD6760)
Medium Lithograph, coloured
The print's long title reads like a newspaper report. Greenwich describes the scene as the Great Eastern during her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York, escorted by a number of smaller vessels including the Terrible, the Sphinx, the Hawk and the Caroline. Day and Son's lithographs let the public share the spectacle of a ship five times the size of the largest then in existence finally going to sea after years of difficulty. The escorts do the artist's work, giving her scale.
The real ship After a failed launch attempt in November 1857, the Great Eastern floated on 31 January 1858; during her trials in September 1859 a steam explosion killed five crewmen, and Brunel died shortly after. In June 1860 she began her first Atlantic crossing as a liner.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Image: After Robert Charles Dudley, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Print
Natchez and Eclipse Named ship
A Midnight Race on the Mississippi, 1860
Artist Frances Flora Bond Palmer (1812 to 1876), for Currier and Ives
Where to see it National Gallery of Art, Washington (2012.16.1)
Medium Colour lithograph with hand-colouring on wove paper
Fanny Palmer, the English-born lithographer who was the first woman in the United States to make her living as a full-time artist, drew this night race from a sketch by H. D. Manning of the Natchez. The National Gallery describes fire bursting from the tops of the smokestacks as the two boats power down a wide river at night, black smoke billowing back, people lining both decks under a moonlit sky; the Natchez carries the words Vicksburg, Natchez and New Orleans Mail Line around her name. It is the romance of the river at its height: rivalry, danger and speed, lit by furnaces and moonlight.
The real ship The Natchez, a boat of the Vicksburg, Natchez and New Orleans Mail Line as her lettering records, and the Eclipse were Mississippi side-wheel steamboats; the Natchez line of boats was run by Captain Thomas P. Leathers, who loved to prove his boats were the fastest.
Sources National Gallery of Art · Wikipedia
Image: Frances Flora Bond Palmer, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Great Eastern Named ship
PSS 'Great Eastern', 1860
Artist Edwin Weedon (died 1873)
Where to see it Science Museum, London (1868-63)
Medium Oil on canvas
The Science Museum keeps this portrait of the Great Eastern among its collections, a reminder that the Victorians saw her as a work of engineering as much as a ship. Weedon shows her as the paddle steamship she was, driven by both paddle wheels and a screw propeller. Painted in 1860, the year she at last entered Atlantic service, it catches the ship at the moment her owners still hoped she would pay.
The real ship Designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and built by J. Scott Russell and Co. at Millwall, she floated in 1858; her length of 692 feet was not surpassed until 1899. She became a cable ship, laid the first lasting transatlantic cable in 1866 and was broken up on Merseyside in 1889.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Isabel II (ex-Royal William) Named ship
The Steamer Isabel II in a Heavy Swell (El vapor Isabel II en la marejada), before 1863
Artist Antonio de Brugada (1804 to 1863)
Where to see it Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid
Medium Oil on canvas
Antonio de Brugada, a Madrid-born marine painter and honorary court painter to Queen Isabel II from 1844, counted El vapor Isabel II among his principal works. The ship behind the name had a remarkable history. As the Royal William she crossed the Atlantic in 1833 almost entirely under steam, and one of her owners, Samuel Cunard, drew lessons from her that he used in founding his line. Sold to the Spanish Navy and renamed Isabel Segunda after the queen, she became the first steam warship to fire in anger, at Zarauz in 1839 during the First Carlist War. Brugada shows her in a heavy swell.
The real ship Royal William, a Canadian side-wheel paddle steamer built at Cape Blanc, Quebec, crossed the Atlantic in 1833 almost entirely under steam. Sold to the Spanish Navy as Isabel Segunda, she fired on Zarauz on 14 April 1839, and was driven ashore and wrecked at Algeciras on 8 January 1860.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia (ES) · Wikipedia
Image: Antonio de Brugada, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Print
Princess Named ship
"Wooding Up" on the Mississippi, 1863
Artist Frances Flora Bond Palmer (1812 to 1876), for Currier and Ives
Where to see it National Gallery of Art, Washington (2011.30.1); impression also at the Library of Congress
Medium Colour lithograph with hand-colouring on wove paper
The romance of the Mississippi ran on firewood. Palmer's night scene shows the steamboat Princess being loaded with wood by men gathered round a fire on the bank, orange smoke rising from her stacks into the dark sky, while another steamboat passes in the distance beneath a full moon. It is the other side of the racing prints: the endless labour of feeding the boilers. The Library of Congress impression records that the print was entered for copyright in 1863 and numbered among the firm's New Best Fifty.
The real ship The Princess was a Mississippi steamboat; like the river boats of her day she burned wood and had to stop to take on fuel.
Sources National Gallery of Art · Library of Congress
Image: Frances Flora Bond Palmer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Print
St. John (Hudson River steamboat) Named ship
The Hudson River Steamboat "St. John", 1864
Artist Frances Flora Bond Palmer (1812 to 1876), for Currier and Ives
Where to see it The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (63.550.33)
Medium Lithograph printed in two colours, with some hand-colouring
In the mid-nineteenth century many travellers between New York and Albany preferred the steamboat on the scenic Hudson, a trip of about seven and a half hours each way. Fanny Palmer shows one of America's largest steamboats broadside on, St. John displayed on her paddle wheel cover and on the pennant above the captain's cabin, her reflection lying on the glassy river. Passengers crowd all three decks, fore and aft, to enjoy the Hudson Highlands. It is less a ship portrait than a portrait of a way of travelling.
The real ship St. John was a Hudson River passenger steamer launched in the 1860s for the People's Line and named after Alanson J. St. John, one of its founders; with her running mate Drew she was one of the river's so-called floating palaces.
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
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Great Eastern Named ship
A Buoy Caught in the Paddle of the Steamship 'Great Eastern', c. 1865
Artist Henry Clifford
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC3381)
Medium Oil painting
A small mishap becomes a painting because the man who painted it served in her engine room. Henry Clifford, recorded by Greenwich as the Great Eastern's second engineer, shows a buoy caught in one of her paddle wheels, the largest set of paddle wheels in existence. On a ship laying cable across an ocean, any stoppage of those wheels was felt below. It is a rare view of the working life of the great ship rather than her public glory.
The real ship The Great Eastern carried both paddle wheels and a screw propeller, with the largest paddle wheels in existence. From 1865 she worked as a cable ship, laying the first lasting transatlantic telegraph cable in 1866.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Great Eastern Named ship
The Steamship Great Eastern Laying the First Successful Atlantic Cable, 1865
Artist Henry Clifford
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC3380)
Medium Painting
This is the Great Eastern painted from the inside: Greenwich records that the artist was the ship's second engineer. By 1865 the giant that had ruined her builders had found her true work, laying telegraph cable from Ireland towards Newfoundland. A passenger who saw her at sea off Ushant in 1869 described her escort steamer as looking like a waterman's boat beside her, and how his ship's crew manned the rigging and cheered as they watched the cable paying out. Clifford's picture carries that same pride, the pride of the men who kept her engines turning while she tied two continents together.
“We could plainly see the cable ‘paying’ out.”
The real ship Launched in 1858, the Great Eastern had both paddle and screw propulsion and made only nine Atlantic crossings before conversion to a cable ship. Her 1865 attempt failed when the cable broke, but in 1866 she laid a new cable and recovered and completed the 1865 one; in 1869 she laid a French Atlantic cable from Brest.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Steam, liners and shipyards · Print
Racing Mississippi steamboats Unnamed
The Champions of the Mississippi: "A Race for the Buckhorns", 1866
Artist Frances Flora Bond Palmer (1812 to 1876), for Currier and Ives
Where to see it Library of Congress, Washington (pga.00658)
Medium Lithograph
Fanny Palmer drew this contest for Currier and Ives in 1866: three tall-stacked side-wheelers running neck and neck, black smoke pouring from their chimneys, while people cheer round a bonfire on the wooded bank. Her title promises 'a race for the buckhorns'. English-born, Palmer produced around two hundred lithographs for the firm and was widely renowned for her technical skill, and in scenes like this she fixed the image of the racing river steamboat in the popular mind, part sport, part danger, all spectacle.
The vessels The Mississippi steamboat began with the New Orleans, a heavy side-wheeler launched at Pittsburgh in 1811; by the 1860s tall-stacked side-wheel packets like these crowded the river.
Sources Library of Congress · Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Image: Frances Flora Bond Palmer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Great Eastern Named ship
Homeward Bound: "The Great Eastern", c. 1866
Artist Robert Charles Dudley (1826 to 1909)
Where to see it Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (92.10.42)
Medium Oil on canvas
This large canvas by the British watercolourist and lithographer Robert Dudley shows the Great Eastern under the title Homeward Bound. Its provenance tells the rest: the painting was given to the Metropolitan Museum in 1892 by Cyrus W. Field, and the museum files it under the transatlantic cable. For the men of the cable, the giant ship was not Brunel's commercial failure but the only hull big enough to carry it across the ocean. The title turns an engineering triumph into a homecoming.
The real ship Brunel's Great Eastern, floated in 1858, was 692 feet long, a length not surpassed until 1899, and carried both paddle wheels and a screw. After a disappointing career as a liner she laid the first lasting transatlantic telegraph cable in 1866; she ended as a floating music hall and advertising hoarding in Liverpool and was broken up on Merseyside in 1889.
Steam, liners and shipyards · Print
Queen of the West and two other Mississippi steamboats Named ship
"Rounding a Bend" on the Mississippi: The Parting Salute, 1866
Artist Frances Flora Bond Palmer (1812 to 1876), for Currier and Ives
Where to see it The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (63.550.47)
Medium Hand-coloured lithograph
Currier and Ives issued more than thirty prints of the Mississippi, and pictures of steamboats were among the most popular with the public. Here three paddle-wheel steamboats round a bend in the river, and the Queen of the West fires a signal rocket, the parting salute of the title. Hand colouring turns the image into a moonlit night, with orange fiery smoke belching from the smokestacks. The designer, Fanny Palmer, was one of the most important artists working for Nathaniel Currier and later Currier and Ives between 1849 and 1868, when she produced about two hundred of the firm's best landscapes.
The real ship The Mississippi steamboats of the 1860s were paddle-wheel steamers carrying passengers and freight on the river; the Queen of the West shown here is not otherwise identified.
Sources The Met · Wikimedia Commons
Image: Frances Flora Bond Palmer, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Print
Bristol (1867) and Providence (1866), Long Island Sound steamers Named ship
Steamboats Passing at Midnight: On Long Island Sound, 1868 to 1874
Artist Currier and Ives, lithographers and publishers (active 1857 to 1907)
Where to see it The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (63.550.346)
Medium Hand-coloured lithograph
A moonlit meeting on Long Island Sound, a lighthouse in the background at left. The Bristol, in the foreground, heads one way and her sister Providence the other. They were built with the largest engines of their day and were called floating palaces, with 240 staterooms, berths for up to 1,200 passengers and cargo space equal to forty railway wagons, running between New York and Rhode Island. The print catches the romance of night travel by water; Providence served until 1901, while Bristol was destroyed by fire on 30 December 1888 on arrival at Newport.
The real ship Providence was launched in 1866 and her sister Bristol made her maiden voyage in 1867, on the Long Island Sound route between New York and Rhode Island. Providence ran until 1901; Bristol was destroyed by fire on 30 December 1888 on arrival at Newport.
Sources The Met · Wikimedia Commons
Image: Currier and Ives, lithographers and publishers, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Print
Robert E. Lee and Natchez Named ship
The Great Mississippi Steamboat Race: From New Orleans to St. Louis, July 1870, between the R.E. Lee, Captain John W. Cannon, and Natchez, Captain Leathers, 1870
Artist Currier and Ives, lithographers and publishers (active 1857 to 1907)
Where to see it Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (63.550.405); another impression at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich (PAH0339)
Medium Hand-coloured lithograph, with gum arabic
The great race of 1870 was run between New Orleans and St. Louis, and Currier and Ives put its result straight into the title: won by the R. E. Lee in 3 days, 18 hours and 30 minutes over 1,210 miles. The print shows the two side-wheelers racing from the background towards us, the Lee at left and the Natchez at right. By the popular account, Captain Cannon stripped the Lee of excess weight, carried few passengers and arranged refuelling barges in advance, while the Natchez carried her normal load and lost hours to fog. This lithograph immortalised the race.
The real ship Robert E. Lee, the 'Monarch of the Mississippi', was built at New Albany, Indiana, in 1866 to a hull designed by DeWitt Hill. The Natchez was the seventh boat of that name run by Captain Thomas P. Leathers, built at Cincinnati in 1869, and had beaten the speed record set by the J. M. White in 1844.
Sources The Met · Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Image: Currier and Ives, lithographers and publishers, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Shipping in the river Unnamed
The Captain's Daughter, 1873
Artist James Tissot (1836 to 1902)
Where to see it Southampton City Art Gallery
Medium Oil on canvas
Shown at the Royal Academy in 1873, and sometimes confused with The Last Evening shown there the same year, this is Tissot's comedy of courtship by the water. A younger man seems to be failing to win the captain's daughter, either because she is not interested or because her father is hard to win over; in another reading, the older man is bolstering the younger with drink and advice. The young woman has turned away from both of them, field glasses raised, to stare at the shipping in the river. The ships are her escape, the world beyond the men's talk.
The vessels The masts of unnamed ships in the river, seen from the waterside; the painting does not identify them.
Sources Wikipedia · Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Ship's deck in the port of London Unnamed
The Last Evening, 1873
Artist James Tissot (1836 to 1902)
Where to see it Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London (737)
Medium Oil on canvas
Tissot settled in Britain after the Franco-Prussian War, and The Last Evening, shown at the Royal Academy in 1873, is set aboard a ship among her rigging and deck fittings. It is never made clear who the figures are to one another or what this last evening means: a departure, a farewell, a courtship ending. A young woman reclining in a rocking chair, studied separately in a drawing now at the Getty, is at its heart, with a young officer leaning towards her. The ship is the reason for the mood, a place where every evening might be the last before sailing.
The vessels An unnamed sailing ship, her masts, rigging and deck furniture filling the background; the painting does not identify the vessel.
Sources Wikipedia · Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Print
Drew and St. John (Hudson River steamboats) Named ship
American Steamboats on the Hudson, Passing the Highlands, 1874
Artist Charles Richard Parsons (1844 to 1918) and Lyman W. Atwater, for Currier and Ives
Where to see it The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (63.550.31)
Medium Lithograph, printed in colour
After the 1840s many travellers took luxury steamers up the Hudson from New York or Albany, bound for holidays at Saratoga Springs or Lake George. Parsons and Atwater, known for maritime scenes and city views, show two of the great floating palaces of the 1860s, the Drew and the St. John, in the Hudson Highlands. Inside were inlaid mahogany staircases, huge mirrors and paintings, fine restaurants and arcades. The Met reads the print as a way of broadcasting the skills of American shipbuilders, who were competing against the British in world trade and travel.
The real ship The Drew and the St. John were Hudson River passenger steamers of the People's Line, launched in the 1860s and named after the line's founders, Daniel Drew and Alanson J. St. John.
Sources The Met · Library of Congress
Image: Charles Richard Parsons, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Ship's deck dressed for a ball during a regatta Unnamed
The Ball on Shipboard, c. 1874
Artist James Tissot (1836 to 1902)
Where to see it Tate, London (N04892)
Medium Oil on canvas
A ship's deck is turned into a ballroom under an awning hung with the flags of many nations, during a regatta off the Isle of Wight. Tissot drew on the idea of fashionable gatherings on the royal yacht, though the lady in the straw hat by the rail is not, as once believed, the Princess of Wales. The Times praised the grace of the girls, the taste of their dresses and the characterisation of the gentlemen, yachtsmen and naval officers alike. The ship becomes a floating drawing room, its rails, awnings and bunting framing a whole society at play.
“the scene on board a man of war at Spithead, converted into a ball-room by an awning lined and fringed with flags”
The vessels The setting is a ship's deck dressed for a ball during regatta week off the Isle of Wight; The Times of 1874 read it as a man-of-war at Spithead. No specific vessel is identified.
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
HMS Calcutta Named ship
The Gallery of HMS 'Calcutta' (Portsmouth), c. 1876
Artist James Tissot (1836 to 1902)
Where to see it Tate, London (N04847)
Medium Oil on canvas
Two women in gauzy white dresses and a young naval lieutenant stand on the quarter gallery at the stern of HMS Calcutta, the curves of the iron railings echoing the corseted figure of the woman who hides her face behind her fan. Troopships lie beyond under smoky grey skies. The old teak warship, by then a gunnery training ship at Portsmouth, becomes a stage for flirtation and moral uncertainty; the title may even hide a French pun. Henry James dismissed it as 'hard, vulgar and banal', yet the ship's railings and the women's dresses are painted with loving precision.
“hard, vulgar and banal”
The real ship An 84-gun second-rate built of teak at Bombay and launched in 1831, Calcutta served in the Baltic during the Crimean War and in the Second Opium War, becoming in 1858 the first ship of the line to visit Japan. From 1865 she was a gunnery ship at Portsmouth alongside HMS Excellent; she later moved to Devonport and was sold for breaking up in 1908.
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Small boat among Thames shipping Unnamed
On the Thames (How Happy I Could Be with Either?), 1876
Artist James Tissot (1836 to 1902)
Where to see it The Hepworth Wakefield (A1.323); drypoint version 'The Thames' at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich (PAG9433)
Medium Oil on canvas
A single man, perhaps a sailor, takes two unchaperoned young women on a pleasure trip through the crowded shipping of the Thames, a picnic hamper and bottles of champagne at their feet. Royal Museums Greenwich notes that critics at the time found the image 'fast', and at the Royal Academy in 1876 it was poorly received, one critic calling it 'more French than English'. Behind the trio the working river goes on, masts, hulls and funnel smoke in the London haze. The modern steam river becomes the setting for a modern, and disapproved of, pleasure.
The vessels The boat carries its passengers past moored sailing ships and smoking steamers, the busy commercial traffic of the Victorian Thames.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia · Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Ships of the line and an ironclad in Portsmouth Dockyard Unnamed
Portsmouth Dockyard, c. 1877
Artist James Tissot (1836 to 1902)
Where to see it Tate, London (N05302)
Medium Oil on canvas
A Highland sergeant in kilt and feather bonnet sits in a rowing boat between two women, turning from the unhappy one under her parasol towards the smiling one. Around them tower the bows of two old square-rigged ships of the line, a naval boat's crew passes, and in the background lies a modern ironclad. Tissot reworked the subject from his On the Thames, which one critic had called 'wilfully vulgar', and his etching of it carried the title Entre les deux mon coeur balance. The old wooden navy and the new iron one frame a very human hesitation.
“wilfully vulgar”
The vessels Two old square-rigged ships of the line and a modern ironclad share the harbour, the wooden and iron navies side by side in the Portsmouth of the 1870s.
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Baltic (White Star Line, 1871) Named ship
The Steamship Baltic, 1879
Artist Antonio Jacobsen (1850 to 1921)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich (BHC3219)
Medium Oil on canvas
A portrait of an Atlantic liner signed 'N. Jacobsen 1879'. Baltic flies the White Star house flag at her mainmast and the American flag at the fore. She belonged to the young White Star Line, which entered the fiercely competitive North Atlantic emigrant trade around 1871, and in 1873 she took the Blue Riband with a record passage between New York and Queenstown. Advertisements of the day promised quick and regular crossings, with staterooms placed amidships, away from the noise and motion at the after part of the ship.
“designed to afford the very best accommodation to all classes of passengers”
The real ship Built by Harland and Wolff at Belfast and launched in 1871 as Pacific, she was renamed Baltic that year and sailed on her maiden voyage from Liverpool to Queenstown and New York. Chartered to the Inman Line in 1883 and sold to the Holland America Line in 1888 as Veendam, she foundered in the North Atlantic in February 1898 after a collision with a wreck, with no loss of life.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich
Image: Antonio Jacobsen, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
A steam tug leaving Ostend Unnamed
A Tug Leaving the Harbour of Ostend at High Tide (Ein Schlepper verlässt den Hafen von Ostende bei Flut), before 1879
Artist Andreas Achenbach (1815 to 1910)
Where to see it Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA), inv. 1500
Medium Oil on canvas
Achenbach, one of the founders of the Düsseldorf school, was a landscape and seascape painter in the Romantic style, and he and his brother Oswald were regular visitors to Ostend. Here a steam tug leaves the harbour of Ostend at high tide. The painting was bought from the artist in 1879 by the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and is now in the city's Royal Museum of Fine Arts. It is steam against the sea, painted by a Romantic who found drama in the everyday traffic of a port.
The vessels An unnamed harbour steam tug of Ostend, of the kind that towed vessels in and out of the port.
Sources Wikidata · Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Image: Andreas Achenbach, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
A sailing ship towed by a steam tug Unnamed
In the Gulf of Finland (V Finskom zalive), 1881
Artist Lev Lagorio (1826 to 1905)
Where to see it Tyumen Museum of Fine Arts, Tyumen
Medium Oil on canvas
Lagorio knew these waters: in 1846 he sailed his own boat along the shores of the Gulf of Finland. In a flat calm, under a pale turquoise sky, a tall black-hulled sailing ship with her sails furled is towed by a small tug with a tall funnel, a man at her wheel, their reflections lying still on the water. It is a quiet picture of the changing sea: sail waiting on steam when the wind fails. The contrast of the two hulls, one tall and elegant, one small and purposeful, is the whole subject.
The vessels An unnamed square-rigged merchant ship under tow by a small steam tug in the Gulf of Finland.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia (RU)
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Ships at the Glasgow quays on the Clyde Unnamed
Shipping on the Clyde, 1881
Artist John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836 to 1893)
Where to see it Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Carmen Thyssen collection (CTB.1989.28)
Medium Oil on millboard
Glasgow by moonlight: shop windows glow along the street by the Clyde, two dockworkers warm themselves at a small fire, and the masts of the moored ships rise in the mist. It has been called a lyrically beautiful evocation of the industrial era, painted so exactly that it captures the chill in the damp air and the moisture soaking into the heavy clothes of the few figures awake. On the great shipbuilding river, Grimshaw paints not the noise of the yards but the port's silent night, the sailing ships standing like a leafless wood against the sky.
The vessels Unnamed sailing ships berthed along the Clyde in central Glasgow in the early 1880s, when the river was one of the great ports of the Victorian world.
Image: John Atkinson Grimshaw, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Steam tug with a coal barge in the Pool of London Unnamed
Toil, Glitter, Grime and Wealth on a Flowing Tide, 1883
Artist William Lionel Wyllie (1851 to 1931)
Where to see it Tate, London (N01580)
Medium Oil on canvas
Looking west through the Pool of London, Wyllie puts a coal barge lashed to a steam tug in the foreground, lightermen at work on her load, and lets the smoke of a whole working river rise behind among the masts. Royal Museums Greenwich, which holds his etching after it, call the painting his most important picture, the one that helped to make his reputation when he showed it at the Royal Academy in 1883. The title names both sides of the river's life, the wealth of commerce and the toil of the men who moved it. Steam here is not romance but coal, grime and labour on the tide.
“there was a stark contrast between the wealth created by commerce and the toil of those employed on the river”
The vessels Steam tugs and lighters moved coal and cargo through the crowded Pool of London; the lightermen who worked them were, as Royal Museums Greenwich puts it, those employed on the river whose toil made its wealth.
Sources Tate · Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikimedia Commons
Image: William Lionel Wyllie, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
SMS Oldenburg Named ship
The Building of the Oldenburg, a Central Battery Ship, at the Vulcan Dockyard in Stettin (Bau der Panzerkorvette Oldenburg auf der Stettiner Werft Vulcan), 1886
Artist Carl Hochhaus (1852 to 1935)
Where to see it Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin (Gm 97/8)
Medium Painting
Hochhaus paints the hull of the Oldenburg rising above the Vulcan yard at Stettin, a crowd of workmen, forges and scaffolding around her and a great bronze propeller glinting in the foreground. The yard built warships for the Imperial German Navy as well as some of the most famous German civilian ships. It is a picture of pride in industry, for the Oldenburg was the first German capital ship built entirely of German-made steel, a hull whose metal was as much a statement as her guns.
The real ship Laid down at AG Vulcan, Stettin, in 1883, launched in December 1884 and commissioned in April 1886, Oldenburg carried eight 24 cm guns amidships and was the first German capital ship built entirely of German-made steel. She saw little service, became a harbour-defence ship in 1900 and a target ship from 1912, and was broken up in 1919.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia · Wikidata
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Sailing ships and steamers moored along the Liverpool waterfront Unnamed
Liverpool Quay by Moonlight, 1887
Artist John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836 to 1893)
Where to see it Tate, London (T00902)
Medium Oil on canvas
An omnibus with a green rear lamp has stopped on the damp cobbles to pick up a woman in front of lit shop windows, and along the quay to the left the masts of the moored ships rise into the moonlit haze. Grimshaw made the Victorian port city his own subject, painting the docks of London, Hull, Liverpool and Glasgow by night in a sharply focused, almost photographic manner. Whistler, the other great painter of nocturnes, paid him the handsomest compliment. The ships here are the city's forest of masts, glimpsed between gaslight and moonlight.
“I considered myself the inventor of nocturnes until I saw Grimmy's moonlit pictures.”
The vessels Unnamed sailing ships moored along the Liverpool waterfront; only their masts and rigging show above the quay.
Image: John Atkinson Grimshaw, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Søndhordland Named ship
The Local Steamer at the Pier (Lokalbåt ved kaien), 1891
Artist Johannes Grimelund (1842 to 1917)
Where to see it Norwegian Maritime Museum, Oslo (NSM.K03041)
Medium Oil on canvas
Grimelund, the Norwegian painter who trained in Christiania, Düsseldorf, Karlsruhe and Paris, paints a local steamer lying at a small quay. She has been identified as DS Søndhordland, a steamer built in 1872 that served the Hardanger Sunnhordlandske company of Bergen from 1880 to 1949. Grimelund gives a humble working boat the attention usually kept for great ships, and the picture now hangs in the Norwegian Maritime Museum in Oslo.
The real ship DS Søndhordland was built in 1872 and served Hardanger Sunnhordlandske Dampskipsselskap (HSD), the Bergen fjord steamer company founded in 1880, from 1880 to 1949.
Sources Wikidata · Wikipedia (NO) · Wikimedia Commons
Image: Johannes Grimelund, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Murtaja, Astra and Botnia Named ship
Steamboats: the Icebreakers Murtaja, Astra and Botnia off Helsinki (Höyrylaivoja), 1891
Artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865 to 1931)
Where to see it Gallen-Kallela Museum, Espoo (GKM 290)
Medium Oil on canvas
In 1891 the young Gallen-Kallela looked at modern Finland: three steamships in the frozen sea off Helsinki, identified by the Gallen-Kallela Museum as the icebreakers Murtaja, Astra and Botnia. The canvas is small, only 19 by 38 cm. Murtaja, completed the year before, was Finland's first state-owned icebreaker and one of the first purpose-built icebreakers in the world. The picture records the moment when steam began to keep a winter sea open.
The real ship Murtaja was built by Bergsunds Mekaniska Verkstad in Stockholm, launched in December 1889 and completed in March 1890, the first state-owned icebreaker of Finland and one of the first purpose-built icebreakers in the world; she served for 68 years and was scrapped in 1958.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikidata · Wikipedia
Image: Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Ships in the Liverpool docks at night Unnamed
Liverpool Docks by Night, 1892
Artist John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836 to 1893)
Where to see it Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (WAG 10328)
Medium Oil on canvas
Painted the year before his death and now in Liverpool's own Walker Art Gallery, this small canvas returns to the subject Grimshaw made his own: the docks of a great port at night. The masts of the ships rise along the left of a wet, gaslit dock road, while a carriage and a few figures pass the glowing shop windows. His pictures of gaslit streets and misty waterfronts, as one writer put it, conveyed an eerie warmth as well as alienation. The ships are not portraits but presences, the sleeping machinery of a trading city.
The vessels Unnamed sailing ships moored in Liverpool's docks in the early 1890s, shown only by their masts and rigging above the quay.
Image: John Atkinson Grimshaw, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Missouri (American famine relief steamer) Named ship
The Relief Ship (Korabl pomoshchi), 1892
Artist Ivan Aivazovsky (1817 to 1900)
Where to see it Private collection (sold at Sotheby's, 2008)
Medium Oil on canvas
In 1892 an American Famine Fleet of six steamships carried food to a Russia stricken by famine, and the painting's full Russian title names this one: the arrival of the steamer Missouri with bread in Russia. Aivazovsky pictured the events that year in two canvases, The Relief Ship and Food Distribution. Travelling to America in October 1892, he gave both to the Corcoran as an act of diplomacy. At home the Tsar barred the paintings, judging their themes unpatriotic. The ship here is a merchant steamer on a mission of mercy, carrying a cargo of bread rather than guns.
The real ship The relief ships sailed to Russia between late February and mid-July 1892, carrying about 2,000 tons of food each on average; Indiana reached Liepāja (Libau) on 16 March with 1,900 tons and Missouri on 4 April with a further 2,500 tons.
Sources Wikipedia · Wikimedia Commons
Image: Ivan Aivazovsky, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
May McWilliams (ocean-going tug) Named ship
The Ocean Going Tug "May McWilliams", c. 1895
Artist Antonio Jacobsen (1850 to 1921)
Where to see it Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington (1966.83)
Medium Oil on canvas
The Danish-born Jacobsen, who settled in West Hoboken across the Hudson from Manhattan, spent his free time at New York's harbour and along the river, painting everything from tugboats to transatlantic liners; he produced more than 6,000 portraits of sail and steam vessels. Here he gives a working tug the full dignity of a portrait. Look closely, the Smithsonian suggests, and you can see her captain in the top cabin at the front and a single passenger at the rear. Harbour captains had used tugs since the 1700s to escort larger ships through narrow or complicated passages.
The real ship May McWilliams was an ocean-going tug, known here from Jacobsen's portrait of about 1895; nothing further is recorded about her.
Sources Smithsonian American Art Museum · Wikipedia
Image: Antonio Jacobsen, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
An imaginary steamship in a storm Unnamed
The Ship in the Storm (Le Navire dans la tempête), c. 1899
Artist Henri Rousseau (1844 to 1910)
Where to see it Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris (RF 1960 27), Jean Walter and Paul Guillaume collection
Medium Oil on canvas
Rousseau's ship is caught in a crossing that is no pleasure cruise. The Orangerie describes her as an amalgam of different models: portholes like a liner, a ram bow like a battleship, a mixture also found in the toy boats of the day, while the offset third funnel recalls the cruiser D'Entrecasteaux, launched in 1896. The sea looks cut from sheet metal and the sky is treated like a stage backdrop, which the writer Jean-Pierre Labiau compares to the mechanical boats of fairground stalls. Rousseau wrote of his fascination with the art of simple people, shop signs, votive pictures and fairground booths, and his steamer comes straight from that world.
The vessels An imaginary vessel: the museum describes the ship as a mixture of liner, battleship and toy boat, with a third funnel recalling the French cruiser D'Entrecasteaux of 1896.
Sources musee-orangerie.fr · Wikipedia (FR)
Image: Henri Rousseau; photo Siren-Com, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Drawing
Oceanic Named ship
The White Star Liner Oceanic (II) off New Brighton, Having Just Left Liverpool Bound for New York, 1904
Artist Charles Dixon (1872 to 1934)
Where to see it Private collection (Bonhams, The Marine Sale, 24 April 2024)
Medium Watercolour heightened with white on board
Dixon catches the Oceanic just after leaving Liverpool off New Brighton, bound for New York, and captions the sheet Off New Brighton at lower left as if noting the moment from the shore. When she sailed on her maiden voyage in 1899 she was the largest ship in the world. The watercolour is long and narrow, 27 by 76.5 centimetres, made for a ship that was all length. It records the White Star Liverpool service at its proudest, before the company opened its Southampton route in 1907.
The real ship Built by Harland and Wolff at Belfast for the White Star Line, Oceanic sailed on her maiden voyage on 6 September 1899 and was the largest ship in the world until 1901. Commissioned as an armed merchant cruiser on 8 August 1914, she was wrecked off Foula in the Shetland Islands on 8 September 1914.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Steam, liners and shipyards · Drawing
Lusitania Named ship
Launch of Lusitania, c. 1906
Artist William Lionel Wyllie (1851 to 1931)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, Caird Collection (PAE2100)
Medium Grey wash with graphite
Wyllie looks up at the Lusitania from just off her starboard bow as she sits in her launching cradle at John Brown's yard, Clydebank, flags flying for the launch on 7 June 1906. Figures stand on the bow and a large crowd gathers in the foreground, dwarfed by the hull towering above them. Greenwich thinks Wyllie was presumably there. In a few strokes of grey wash he catches what the Clyde felt that day: a ship so big that the people who built her seem tiny at her feet.
The real ship Built by John Brown and Co. at Clydebank for Cunard and launched on 7 June 1906, Lusitania was torpedoed by a U-boat off the Old Head of Kinsale on 7 May 1915 with the loss of 1,198 of those on board.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich
Image: William Lionel Wyllie, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Adriatic Named ship
SS 'Adriatic', the First White Star Liner to Come to Southampton Passing Down Cowes Roads, 31 May 1907
Artist George Washington Sandell (1852 to 1945)
Where to see it SeaCity Museum, Southampton (M328)
Medium Oil on canvas
The long title is the whole story: on 31 May 1907 the Adriatic passed down Cowes Roads as the first White Star liner to come to Southampton, where a few days later the company opened its brand-new express route to Cherbourg and New York. Sandell recorded the day for his port, which was about to become White Star's gateway to America. The Adriatic herself was the largest, fastest and most luxurious of the company's Big Four, and the first ocean liner with an indoor swimming pool and Turkish baths.
The real ship The fourth of White Star's 'Big Four', built by Harland and Wolff in Belfast, Adriatic was the largest, fastest and most luxurious of them and the first ocean liner with an indoor swimming pool and Turkish baths. She opened the new Southampton, Cherbourg and New York route in June 1907, moved to Liverpool in 1911, served as a troop transport from 1917 to 1919, and was broken up at Osaka in 1935.
Image: George Washington Sandell, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Lusitania Named ship
Lusitania, 1907
Artist Norman Wilkinson (1878 to 1971)
Where to see it Private collection (sold at Bonhams, London, 7 October 2015)
Medium Oil on canvas
Norman Wilkinson painted the new Lusitania speeding past the Fastnet lighthouse, probably outward bound for New York on her maiden voyage in 1907. It is the liner as a symbol of national pride: the ship that won the Blue Riband that year and ended a decade of German dominance of the Atlantic crossing. Knowing her fate eight years later, torpedoed off the Old Head of Kinsale on the same southern coast of Ireland, gives the painting a weight its first viewers could not have felt.
The real ship Built by John Brown and Co. at Clydebank and launched on 7 June 1906, Lusitania was briefly the world's largest passenger ship and won the Blue Riband in 1907. On 7 May 1915 she was torpedoed by U-20 off the Old Head of Kinsale and sank in about 18 minutes, with the loss of 1,198 of the 1,960 people aboard.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Image: Norman Wilkinson, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Mauretania Named ship
The Steamship Mauretania in the Mersey, November 1907
Artist Frank Thomas Copnall
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC3459)
Medium Oil on leathercloth
Greenwich acquired this painting as a picture of the Lusitania and only later recognised her sister: the ventilators, low on the Lusitania, are much more noticeable on the Mauretania, just as Copnall painted them. It probably shows her arriving on the Mersey for the first time on 7 November 1907, when she berthed at the Prince's Landing Stage before sailing on her maiden voyage to New York on 16 November. It is a first Liverpool sighting of the ship that would hold the Atlantic speed records for some twenty years.
The real ship Built for Cunard by Swan, Hunter and Wigham Richardson at Wallsend on the Tyne and launched in 1906, Mauretania was the world's largest ship until 1910. She took the eastbound Blue Riband in December 1907 and held both speed records until 1929, served as a troopship and hospital ship in the First World War, and was scrapped at Rosyth in 1935.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Image: Frank Thomas Copnall, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Lusitania Named ship
The R.M.S. Lusitania under Full Steam, 1908
Artist Antonio Jacobsen (1850 to 1921)
Where to see it Private collection (sold at Christie's, New York, 10 February 2004)
Medium Oil on canvas
Jacobsen, called the Audubon of Steam Vessels, painted more than 6,000 ship portraits from his home in West Hoboken, across the Hudson from Manhattan. Here, signed and dated 1908, a year after her maiden voyage, the Lusitania runs under full steam, the record-breaking Cunarder that had recaptured the Blue Riband from Germany. For American viewers she was a marvel of speed and comfort, and after 1915 her loss would help to turn American opinion against Germany.
The real ship Cunard's Lusitania, built by John Brown and Co. at Clydebank and launched in 1906, won the Blue Riband in 1907. She was sunk by the German submarine U-20 off the Old Head of Kinsale on 7 May 1915; 128 Americans were among the dead, and the sinking turned American opinion against Germany.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Image: Antonio Jacobsen, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
North River Steamboat (the Clermont) Named ship
Steamboat "Clermont", 1909
Artist Samuel Ward Stanton (1870 to 1912)
Where to see it New-York Historical Society, New York (1957.73)
Medium Oil on board
Stanton painted Robert Fulton's steamboat in 1909, a century after her first run, and the panel is inscribed 'Copyright, 1909 by Hudson River Day Line'. Given to the New-York Historical Society by the Steamship Historical Society of America, it is a reconstruction in the service of memory: the boat that on 17 August 1807 left New York with a complement of guests and reached Albany after 32 hours under way. She is widely regarded as the first vessel to show that steam could work for commercial transport on the water.
The real ship Built at Charles Browne's shipyard in New York in 1807 for Robert Fulton, with an engine by Boulton and Watt, she ran between New York City and Albany on the Hudson, then called the North River. The name Clermont, by which she is best known, first appeared in a biography of Fulton published in 1817.
Sources emuseum.nyhistory.org · Wikipedia
Image: Samuel Ward Stanton, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Olympic Named ship
Ocean Liner 'Olympic', 1911
Artist Fred Pansing (1844 to 1912)
Where to see it New-York Historical Society, New York (1940.19)
Medium Oil on canvas
Fred Pansing painted the Olympic in 1911, the year she sailed on her maiden voyage as the largest liner in the world. The large canvas, five feet by seven, was given to the New-York Historical Society by the Cunard White Star Line, and belongs to New York's own record of the great liners that ended their Atlantic crossings in its harbour. A year later her sister would sail and never arrive; the Olympic went on for 24 years.
The real ship Lead ship of White Star's Olympic class, built by Harland and Wolff in Belfast, Olympic sailed on her maiden voyage from Southampton on 14 June 1911 and was the world's largest liner for two periods between 1910 and 1913. She served as a troopship in the First World War and was withdrawn in 1935 after 24 years of service.
Sources emuseum.nyhistory.org · Wikidata · Wikipedia
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Titanic Named ship
SS 'Titanic', 1912
Artist George Washington Sandell (1852 to 1945)
Where to see it SeaCity Museum, Southampton (M334)
Medium Oil on canvas
The Titanic sailed from Southampton on her maiden voyage, and Southampton keeps this portrait of her, painted by Sandell in 1912, in its SeaCity Museum. Sandell also painted the Adriatic coming to Southampton in 1907 as the first White Star liner to use the port; together the two canvases span the short first chapter of White Star's express service from the city. Seen in the city that sent her out, a plain portrait of the ship becomes a memorial.
The real ship Built by Harland and Wolff in Belfast for the White Star Line, the second of three Olympic-class liners, Titanic was the largest ship afloat when she entered service. She struck an iceberg on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York and sank on 15 April 1912; of the 2,208 people aboard, about 1,500 died.
Image: George Washington Sandell, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Frederik VIII Named ship
SS Frederik VIII, 1913
Artist Christian Mølsted (1862 to 1930)
Medium Painting
Mølsted, a Danish marine painter from Dragør, shows the new Frederik VIII together with Kronborg Castle at Helsingør. When she entered service she was the largest passenger ship in Scandinavia, built at Stettin for the Scandinavian America Line's Copenhagen to New York route, with room for 1,261 passengers, 881 of them in steerage. The picture sets the old Denmark of the castle against the new ocean steamer that linked Copenhagen with America, and catches her in the year of her launch.
The real ship Built by AG Vulcan at Stettin and launched on 27 May 1913, 159.55 m long and 11,850 GRT, Frederik VIII sailed on her maiden voyage from Copenhagen to New York on 5 February 1914 and served the Scandinavian America Line until she was scrapped in 1936.
Sources Wikipedia · Wikidata · Wikimedia Commons
Image: Christian Mølsted, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Titanic Named ship
The Steamship Titanic, 1913
Artist Harry J. Jansen (Adrianus Johannes Jansen) (1863 to 1943)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC3667)
Medium Oil on canvas
Signed 'Harry J. Jansen / Antwerp 1913', this is a portrait of a ship the painter could never have seen. Arie Jansen was a pierhead painter who had run a café on the Rotterdam waterfront and sold ship portraits to the seamen and shipping people who came in; his British clients called him Harry. He painted almost only North Sea ships, above all railway ferries. Here he shows the Titanic under way with an iceberg to the left, a year after she was lost, and Greenwich notes that it is far from accurate in many technical respects. Two similar Titanic pictures by him are known, one dated 1918.
The real ship Built by Harland and Wolff in Belfast for the White Star Line, Titanic struck an iceberg on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York and sank on 15 April 1912.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikimedia Commons
Image: Harry J. Jansen, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Britannic Named ship
White Star Liner 'Britannic', 1914
Artist Charles Dixon (1872 to 1934)
Where to see it Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, Cultra (HOYFM.1405.2000)
Medium Oil on canvas
Dixon painted the Britannic in 1914, the year she was launched at Belfast, as the White Star liner she was meant to be. She never entered passenger service. The youngest of the three Olympic-class sisters, redesigned after the loss of the Titanic with a double hull along her engine and boiler rooms, she became a hospital ship and sank in the Aegean in 1916. Kept in Northern Ireland, where she was built, this signed canvas in its ornate gilt frame preserves a White Star Britannic that existed only on paper and in paint.
The real ship Launched by Harland and Wolff in Belfast on 26 February 1914 and redesigned after the loss of the Titanic with a double hull along her engine and boiler rooms, Britannic never entered passenger service; from December 1915 she worked as a hospital ship between Britain and the Dardanelles. She struck a mine near Kea in the Aegean on 21 November 1916 and sank in 55 minutes; 30 of the 1,066 people aboard died.
Sources collections.nationalmuseumsni.org · Wikipedia
Steam, liners and shipyards · Drawing
Aquitania and Mauretania Named ship
The Big Liners, Aquitania and Mauretania in Use as Transports, 4.15pm, July 18th 1915
Artist Herbert William Hillier
Where to see it Imperial War Museums, London (Art.IWM ART 4390)
Medium Pencil on lined paper
Two of Cunard's great liners lie together at Mudros in July 1915, four funnels apiece, with transports, battleships and cruisers on either side. Hillier drew them in pencil on a sheet of lined paper and covered it with notes, the way a man records what he can hardly believe he is seeing. The Imperial War Museums keep it as a document of the Gallipoli campaign, but it is also a rare meeting of Cunard's express liners in wartime service, far from New York and Liverpool.
The real ship Aquitania, built by John Brown and Company at Clydebank and launched on 21 April 1913, was converted in the First World War to an armed merchant cruiser, then a troopship, and served as a hospital ship in the Dardanelles campaign; she was the last four-funnelled passenger ship when scrapped after 1950. Mauretania, her Cunard fleet mate, served as a troopship at Gallipoli and then as a hospital ship.
Sources Imperial War Museums · Wikipedia
Image: Herbert William Hillier, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Drawing
Mauretania Named ship
'Mauretania', Leaving Mudros for England, 7pm, July 23rd 1915
Artist Herbert William Hillier
Where to see it Imperial War Museums, London (Art.IWM ART 4406)
Medium Watercolour and pencil on paper
The record-breaker of the Atlantic appears here in the distance, sailing out through the entrance of Mudros Bay on the island of Lemnos in July 1915, smoke rising from her funnels, with several ships moored in the foreground and the hilly coast framing the view. The Imperial War Museums file the sheet under Gallipoli and the Dardanelles, and under the wounded and convalescence: that summer Mauretania was serving as a troopship in the campaign. Hillier notes the exact hour, 7 pm, as a diarist would. The glamour of the liner is gone; what remains is a ship doing her duty.
The real ship Cunard's Mauretania, built by Swan, Hunter and Wigham Richardson at Wallsend on the Tyne and launched in 1906, held the Atlantic speed records for about twenty years. In 1915 she served as a troopship in the Gallipoli campaign and then as a hospital ship; she returned to Cunard livery in 1919 and was scrapped at Rosyth in 1935.
Sources Imperial War Museums · Wikipedia
Image: Herbert William Hillier, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Drawing
Lusitania Named ship
'The Track of the "Lusitania"', 1915 to 1919
Artist William Lionel Wyllie (1851 to 1931)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, Caird Collection (PAF1553)
Medium Watercolour
Wyllie does not show the ship at all, only what she left behind. On a calm evening sea a distant black pall of smoke hangs where the Lusitania went down, and a drifting track of wreckage and people in the water streams towards us while four of her lifeboats pick up survivors. Greenwich calls it a carefully composed view. The attack on an unarmed passenger ship was regarded in Britain and the United States as an atrocity, as the drawing implies, and it was reproduced in colour in Wyllie's More Sea Fights of the Great War in 1919. The absence of the ship is the whole point.
The real ship Cunard's Lusitania was torpedoed by a U-boat off the Old Head of Kinsale, southern Ireland, on the afternoon of 7 May 1915 while heading to Britain from New York, and went down in 18 minutes with the loss of 1,198 of those on board. The sinking was used to great effect in bringing the United States into the war in 1917.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich
Image: William Lionel Wyllie, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Paris Named ship
Paquebot "Paris", 1921 to 1922
Artist Charles Demuth (1883 to 1935)
Where to see it Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio (1931.139)
Medium Oil on canvas
Demuth made sketches of the deck and funnels of the French Line's Paris on a voyage back to the United States from Europe, and they became this painting. He had spent years in the Paris avant-garde and kept aspects of Cubism in his work after coming home, and it shows: a red and black funnel, a white ventilator and the stays are turned into clean, flat geometry. Where earlier painters showed a liner from the quay, Demuth stands on board, among the machinery of travel itself. The Paris had been completed only in 1921, then the largest liner under the French flag.
The real ship Built for the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique at Saint-Nazaire, the Paris was laid down in 1913, launched in 1916 and completed only in 1921 because of the First World War; at 34,569 tons she was then the largest liner under the French flag.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Steam, liners and shipyards · Drawing
Sailing vessels and a steamer in Swinemünde harbour Unnamed
Moonlit Night in the Harbour of Swinemünde (Mondnacht im Hafen von Swinemünde), 1922
Artist Willy Stöwer (1864 to 1931)
Where to see it Private collection
Medium Watercolour on cardboard
By 1922 the Kaiser had abdicated and the German fleet had declined, and with them went the great commissions of Stöwer's career; without imperial favour he found it hard to make a living. Stöwer, born at Wolgast on the Pomeranian coast, turns here to a quiet night in the harbour of Swinemünde: a small sailing vessel and a tall square-rigger moored by the quay, a steamer lying out in the harbour, and a rowing boat crossing the silver track of the moon. The drama of his battle pictures is gone; what remains is a Baltic port at night.
The vessels Swinemünde, today Świnoujście, was a Baltic port; the picture shows sailing vessels at the quay and a steamer in the harbour, none of them named.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia (DE)
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Odin Named ship
The Steamer Odin, II, 1927
Artist Lyonel Feininger (1871 to 1956)
Where to see it Museum of Modern Art, New York (751.1943)
Medium Oil on canvas
A steamer called Odin is the subject of this canvas, which the Museum of Modern Art acquired in 1943. Feininger was born in New York, trained in Hamburg, Berlin and Paris, and built his art from prismatically broken, overlapping forms in translucent colour, with the sea among his great themes. Here a working steamer becomes a study in light, hull, smoke, water and sky sharing the same luminous planes. Set beside the exact ship portraits of the nineteenth century, it shows how far the steamship had travelled as a subject for painters.
The real ship A steamer named Odin, as the title records; her particulars are not given by the museum.
Sources MoMA · Wikipedia · Wikidata
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the Museum of Modern Art, New York, where the original is kept. Photo: Unknown photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Steam, liners and shipyards · Print
Normandie Named ship
Normandie, 1935
Artist Cassandre (Adolphe Jean-Marie Mouron) (1901 to 1968)
Where to see it Victoria and Albert Museum, London (E.648-2017)
Medium Colour lithograph on paper, backed on cotton
The V&A calls this poster the single best-known image of the Normandie. Cassandre shows the liner in a simple, symmetrical frontal view, her looming prow in black, white and red rising over a green sea under a blue sky, and the museum notes how that view conveys at once her gigantic scale and streamlined elegance. It was designed for the French Line in 1935, the year the ship entered service. The V&A's copy came from the estate of René Bouvard, an illustrator for the company, who according to his daughter was given it by Cassandre himself.
“the single best-known image of the Normandie ocean liner”
The real ship Built at Saint-Nazaire for the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique, Normandie entered service in 1935 as the largest and fastest passenger ship afloat and held the Blue Riband at several points, with Queen Mary her main rival. Seized in New York in the Second World War and renamed USS Lafayette, she caught fire and capsized at Pier 88 in 1942 and was scrapped in 1946.
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, where the original is kept. Photo: Christopher Hilton, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Steam, liners and shipyards · Drawing
HMS Illustrious Named ship
HMS Illustrious Entering the Basin at John Brown's Shipyard, Clydebank, 1940
Artist Muirhead Bone (1876 to 1953)
Where to see it Imperial War Museums, London (Art.IWM ART LD 1371)
Medium Chalk and ink on paper
Muirhead Bone, born in Partick on the Clyde and a war artist in both world wars, was an active member of the War Artists Advisory Committee when he made this drawing in 1940. The aircraft carrier Illustrious is guided by three tugs into the basin at John Brown's, Clydebank, the yard that built the Lusitania, the Aquitania and the Queen Mary, while another warship lies moored alongside. In chalk and ink he gives the flat-topped giant and the little tugs the same urgency: the Clyde at war, working on the ships that would fight it.
The real ship HMS Illustrious was the lead ship of her class of Royal Navy aircraft carriers; in late 1940 her aircraft sank one Italian battleship and badly damaged two others at Taranto, and in January 1941 she was hit repeatedly by dive bombers and repaired in the United States.
Sources Imperial War Museums · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the Imperial War Museums, London, where the original is kept. Photo: DeFacto, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Ships building at Lithgows' Kingston Yard, Port Glasgow Unnamed
Shipbuilding on the Clyde: Burners, 1940
Artist Stanley Spencer (1891 to 1959)
Where to see it Imperial War Museums, London (Art.IWM ART LD 432-4)
Medium Oil on canvas (three canvases)
Commissioned by the War Artists Advisory Committee on 6 June 1940 to record the shipbuilding industry, Spencer based Burners on drawings he had made that May at Lithgows' yards in Port Glasgow. The burners cut steel plates with oxy-acetylene torches along chalk lines the machines could not follow; many were young men of sixteen to twenty, and one, top right, has removed his goggles to mop his brow. Burners was the first of the series, painted that summer at the White Hart Inn in Leonard Stanley and shown at the National Gallery in October 1940. The ship is present only as plates, flame and bodies bent to the work.
“In this burners painting I have treated the burners as a series of decorative figures because of the interesting variety of positions they naturally assume.”
The vessels Lithgows' Kingston Yard at Port Glasgow, where Spencer drew, built ships throughout the war; its burners cut the steel plates for the hulls with oxy-acetylene torches.
Sources Imperial War Museums · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the Imperial War Museums, London, where the original is kept. Photo: DeFacto, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Steel masts and crow's nests for ships building at Lithgows, Port Glasgow Unnamed
Shipbuilding on the Clyde: Riveters, 1941
Artist Stanley Spencer (1891 to 1959)
Where to see it Imperial War Museums, London (Art.IWM ART LD 1375)
Medium Oil on canvas
Almost six metres long, Riveters reads like a frieze of the whole yard: men painting two finished crow's nests against corrosion, a gang lining up rivet holes in hollow steel masts, the heater boy dropping a hot rivet into place while the holder on crouches inside the mast and the riveter hammers it flat, and foremen in bowler hats studying a plan. Spencer admired those foremen, their overcoats flapping open as they walked the yard. He wanted each panel to run into the next, like wandering among the varied happenings of the shipyard itself.
“The workmen are the colour of iron, somewhat rusty colour.”
The vessels Steel masts and crow's nests were built in the yard at Lithgows' Kingston Yard, Port Glasgow, riveted by gangs of heater boy, holder on and riveter, as the IWM describes.
Sources Imperial War Museums · Wikipedia
Image: Stanley Spencer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Double bottom of a ship under construction at Lithgows, Port Glasgow Unnamed
Shipbuilding on the Clyde: Welders, 1941
Artist Stanley Spencer (1891 to 1959)
Where to see it Imperial War Museums, London (Art.IWM ART LD 924-6)
Medium Oil on canvas (three panels)
Welders work inside the box sections of a ship's double bottom, lying on their sides and crouching in the cells of steel, while men carry heavy angled plates and two boys toast bread over a brazier. Welding was still new, replacing riveting because it was quicker, and the prefabricated sections these men joined went down to the building berth to become hulls. Second from left, Spencer painted himself, watching a welder through the mask held away from his face: the IWM reads it as a sign that he saw himself not as a detached observer but as part of the war effort.
The vessels Welded prefabricated sections were joined in the yard at Lithgows, Port Glasgow, before going down to the building berth to become part of a hull.
Sources Imperial War Museums · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the Imperial War Museums, London, where the original is kept. Photo: DeFacto, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Keel shoe plate of a ship building at Lithgows, Port Glasgow Unnamed
Shipbuilding on the Clyde: Bending the Keel Plate, 1943
Artist Stanley Spencer (1891 to 1959)
Where to see it Imperial War Museums, London (Art.IWM ART LD 3106)
Medium Oil on canvas
At the centre of this long panel a red-hot shoe plate, just out of the furnace, lies in its cradle while men sweep it clean and hammer it into shape; around it others steer a sheet of steel hanging from a crane, prepare a trolley burner and carry a girder. First called The Shoe Plate, it gave Spencer so much trouble that he almost abandoned it, and he was never happy with it. Yet it holds the most elemental moment of all: the shaping of the keel, the backbone on which the whole ship would be built.
“to where the shoeplate in its cradle is being beaten into shape”
The vessels The shoe plate, part of the keel of a ship under construction at Lithgows' Kingston Yard, Port Glasgow, was heated in the furnace and beaten into shape in its cradle.
Sources Imperial War Museums · Wikipedia
Image: Stanley Spencer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Steam, liners and shipyards · Painting
Frames for ships building at Lithgows, Port Glasgow Unnamed
Shipbuilding on the Clyde: The Furnaces, 1946
Artist Stanley Spencer (1891 to 1959)
Where to see it Imperial War Museums, London (Art.IWM ART LD 5781)
Medium Oil on canvas
Furnace men drag a red-hot steel section from the furnace across a perforated floor, while the iron dogs that will pin the template for bending lie in the foreground. It was the last of the series, finished in early 1946 from a study of May 1940, after Muirhead Bone pressed Spencer for a central panel before the war artists' committee was wound up. Years earlier Spencer had written that the furnace scene was big and important but not enough: love and passion were the only things he wished to express. The heat of the furnace becomes something close to worship of work.
“Religion as I mean it is implicit in everything as a heaven passing through everything”
The vessels At Lithgows, Port Glasgow, steel sections were heated in the furnaces and then bent to shape around templates pinned into perforated floors, as the IWM describes.
Sources Imperial War Museums · Wikipedia
Image: Stanley Spencer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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