Voyages and Exploration
The ships of Columbus and the armadas of Vasco da Gama. The Mayflower, the Half Moon, the Endeavour and the Resolution. The Beagle in the channel that bears her name, the Erebus and the Terror among the icebergs. The ships that went first, and the artists who sailed with them.
This chapter of Ships in Paintings holds 105 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
Voyages and exploration · Drawing
São Gabriel, São Rafael and Berrio Named ship
The Armada of Vasco da Gama, 1497 (Livro de Lisuarte de Abreu), c. 1565
Artist Anonymous Portuguese illuminator
Where to see it The Morgan Library and Museum, New York (MS M.525)
Medium Ink and watercolour on paper
The Livro de Lisuarte de Abreu, now in the Morgan Library, pictures the India armadas one after another, from Vasco da Gama's in 1497 to the fleet of 1563, the ships usually named with their captains. A note in the book says it belonged to Lisuarte de Abreu, who had it made; he sailed to India in 1558 aboard the nau Rainha. The series of fleets had been begun on the order of governor Jorge Cabral in 1550, and the drawings were made in the East. This page opens the sequence with the voyage that started it all, the first fleet to reach India round the Cape.
The real ship Gama's first fleet was led by the naus São Gabriel and São Rafael, built with the help of Bartolomeu Dias, together with the caravel Berrio, which brought the news of India back to Lisbon on 12 July 1499.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia (PT) · Wikipedia
Voyages and exploration · Drawing
Fourth Portuguese India Armada Named ship
The Armada of Vasco da Gama, 1502 (Livro de Lisuarte de Abreu), c. 1565
Artist Anonymous Portuguese illuminator
Where to see it The Morgan Library and Museum, New York (MS M.525)
Medium Ink and watercolour on paper
The Livro de Lisuarte de Abreu records each Portuguese fleet sent to India, and this page gives the whole of Vasco da Gama's second armada of 1502. It was a fleet of twenty ships sent to avenge the defeats of Cabral's armada at Calicut, and here its hulls are gathered on one sheet, ready for inspection. These books were made to honour captains and their ships long after the events, when the India run had become a yearly undertaking, and this page shows how large the enterprise had grown only five years after the first voyage.
The real ship The 4th India Armada of 1502 had 20 ships under Vasco da Gama; it attacked Calicut shipping, founded a crown factory at Cannanore and left a patrol under Vicente Sodré. Its largest ship was the Flor de la Mar, a 400-tonne carrack commanded by Estevão da Gama, and the flagship was the São Jerónimo.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia · Wikipedia (PT)
Voyages and exploration · Drawing
Fifth Portuguese India Armada Named ship
The Armada of Afonso de Albuquerque, 1503 (Livro das Armadas), c. 1568
Artist Anonymous Portuguese illuminator
Where to see it Academia das Ciências de Lisboa, Lisbon (Livro das Armadas, also called Memória das Armadas)
Medium Drawing in a manuscript codex
The fifth armada carried Afonso de Albuquerque to India for the first time. Navigational mistakes scattered it on the outward voyage, and ships spent much time looking for each other, which gives the orderly little groups on this page, one for each of the three squadrons, a certain irony. One squadron, under António de Saldanha, missed the crossing to India altogether and spent the year on the East African coast, where its captains found Table Bay and the strategic island of Socotra.
The real ship Nine or ten ships in three squadrons under Afonso de Albuquerque, Francisco de Albuquerque and António de Saldanha sailed in 1503; the vanguard relieved Cochin and built Fort Sant'Iago, the first Portuguese fort in Asia.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia · Wikipedia (PT)
Voyages and exploration · Drawing
Seventh Portuguese India Armada Named ship
The Armada of Dom Francisco de Almeida, 1505 (Livro das Armadas), c. 1568
Artist Anonymous Portuguese illuminator
Where to see it Academia das Ciências de Lisboa, Lisbon (Livro das Armadas, also called Memória das Armadas)
Medium Drawing in a manuscript codex
Here the pages fill up. Almeida's fleet was the largest Portuguese armada yet sent to India, carrying the first Viceroy of the Indies with orders to secure the Indian Ocean by building a chain of coastal fortresses at Sofala, Kilwa, Anjediva and Cannanore. The illuminator spreads the ships across a double page, great naus and lateen caravels together, so that the book itself seems to swell with the ambition of the enterprise.
The real ship The 7th Armada sailed in 1505 under Dom Francisco de Almeida, first Portuguese Viceroy of the Indies, with 21 ships (22 if the Bom Jesus is counted separately) carrying 1,500 armed men.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia · Wikipedia (PT)
Voyages and exploration · Drawing
Cabral's fleet of thirteen ships Named ship
The Armada of Pedro Álvares Cabral, 1500 (Livro das Armadas), c. 1568
Artist Anonymous Portuguese illuminator
Where to see it Academia das Ciências de Lisboa, Lisbon (Livro das Armadas, also called Memória das Armadas)
Medium Drawing in a manuscript codex
This is perhaps the most moving page of the book. Twelve of Cabral's thirteen ships are drawn with their captains' names, and several are shown overturned or going down, their notes recording that they were lost in the storm. The fleet sighted Brazil on 22 April 1500; a month later, on 23 or 24 May, a storm in the South Atlantic sank four ships, three naus and a caravel commanded by Bartolomeu Dias, the first European to round the Cape of Good Hope, and 380 men were lost. Triumph and loss share one sheet.
The real ship Cabral left Lisbon on 9 March 1500 with thirteen ships, sighted Brazil on 22 April and resumed the voyage in early May; four ships were lost in a storm in the South Atlantic on 23 or 24 May before the rest continued towards India.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia · Wikipedia (PT)
Voyages and exploration · Drawing
The four ships of Vasco da Gama's first voyage Named ship
The Armada of Vasco da Gama, 1497 (Livro das Armadas), c. 1568
Artist Anonymous Portuguese illuminator
Where to see it Academia das Ciências de Lisboa, Lisbon (Livro das Armadas, also called Memória das Armadas)
Medium Drawing in a manuscript codex
The Livro das Armadas, an anonymous codex recording the fleets that sailed from Portugal to India between 1497 and 1566, opens with the voyage that changed the world's trade. Each ship of Vasco da Gama's first voyage is drawn as a small portrait with her captain's name, and one of them is shown wrapped in flames. Only 55 of the 148 men who sailed came home, and the São Rafael was burnt because too few were left to handle her. The page reads like a family register of ships, remembering those that never returned.
The real ship Gama sailed from Lisbon in 1497 with the naus São Gabriel and São Rafael, the caravel Berrio and a store ship, and opened the sea route to India. Disease killed about half the crews; the São Rafael was burnt for lack of men to sail her, and only 55 of the 148 men of the armada survived the voyage.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia (PT) · Wikipedia
Voyages and exploration · Drawing
First squadron of the Fourth Portuguese India Armada, under Vasco da Gama Named ship
Vasco da Gama's Squadron of the Fourth India Armada, 1502 (Livro das Armadas), c. 1568
Artist Anonymous Portuguese illuminator
Where to see it Academia das Ciências de Lisboa, Lisbon (Livro das Armadas, also called Memória das Armadas)
Medium Drawing in a manuscript codex
Gama's second voyage to India was a show of force, and this page gives the first squadron of the fourth armada, the one he led in person: rows of heavy naus and a lateen-rigged caravel, each labelled with its captain. The armada of twenty ships fought its way along the Malabar coast, its caravels and cargo naus sailing in line to break an Arab fleet off Calicut. The Livro gives every vessel the same careful little hull, so that a war fleet becomes an orderly register.
The real ship The 4th India Armada of 1502 comprised 20 ships under Vasco da Gama; it fought the forces of Calicut, left a factor and a palisade at Cannanore, and left a squadron behind to patrol the Indian coast when Gama sailed home in 1503.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia · Wikipedia (PT)
Voyages and exploration · Print
Victoria Named ship
Maris Pacifici (The Pacific Ocean), 1589
Artist Abraham Ortelius (1527 to 1598)
Source Printed map (1589)
Medium Printed map
Ortelius's map of 1589 was the first printed map dedicated to the Pacific, and among its features is a single ship: Magellan's Victoria, the only vessel of his fleet to complete the return voyage. Nearly seventy years after that voyage, the ship had become an emblem of the ocean itself. On a sheet that still shows an imagined southern continent, Terra Australis, she stands for the one thing that had been proved: that the Pacific could be crossed.
The real ship A carrack of 85-tonels built at Ondarroa in Biscay, Victoria sailed from Seville with Magellan's five ships in 1519 and, under Juan Sebastián de Elcano, returned to Sanlúcar on 6 September 1522, the only ship to complete the voyage round the world. She was lost with all hands on a voyage from the Antilles to Seville in about 1570.
Sources Wikipedia
Image: Abraham Ortelius, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Print
Victoria Named ship
Ferdinand Magellan (Ferdinandes Magalanes Lusitanus), from Americae Retectio, c. 1592
Artist Johannes Stradanus (1523 to 1605)
Where to see it Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid
Medium Print
Stradanus, a Flemish artist who settled in Florence, designed the Americae Retectio series around 1592 to celebrate the discovery of the New World, and this plate is given to Magellan. It is an allegory rather than a record: the ship stands for the navigator's tenacity amid uncertainty and for what he left to the world, the passage past Tierra del Fuego to the other side of the globe. Seventy years after the voyage, the ship that first went round the world had already become an emblem.
The real ship Victoria, an 85-tonel carrack built at Ondarroa, sailed with Magellan's fleet of five and, under Juan Sebastián Elcano, was the only ship to complete the voyage, returning to Sanlúcar on 6 September 1522 after the first circumnavigation of the world.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Image: Johannes Stradanus, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Print
Santa María, Niña and Pinta Named ship
Columbus Landing on Hispaniola, 6 December 1492, Greeted by the Inhabitants, c. 1594
Artist Theodor de Bry (1528 to 1598)
Where to see it Library of Congress, Washington (Prints and Photographs, cph.3b07443)
Medium Copper engraving
De Bry, a Walloon engraver, goldsmith and publisher who settled in Frankfurt, never visited the Americas, yet his engraved books on the voyages shaped how Europe pictured them. In this plate, printed with a German text, Columbus in armour receives gifts of gold from the people of Hispaniola while his men raise a wooden cross on the shore. Behind them the ships lie close in, one with men crowding her rigging and deck. They tell the whole story at a glance: they came, and they will bring others.
The real ship Santa María, originally La Gallega, was a medium-sized nau or carrack built in Pontevedra, Galicia, the largest and the slowest of Columbus's three ships in 1492. On 24 December 1492, with a cabin boy at the helm, currents carried her onto a sandbank and she was lost.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Voyages and exploration · Print
Golden Hind Named ship
Vera Totius Expeditionis Nauticae (The Broadside Map of Drake's and Cavendish's Circumnavigations), 1595
Artist Jodocus Hondius (1563 to 1612)
Where to see it Library of Congress, Washington
Medium Engraving
Jodocus Hondius, a Flemish engraver who had come to London in 1584 and engraved charts and globe gores for English patrons, made this double hemisphere map in 1595 to record both English circumnavigations, Drake's of 1577 to 1580 and Cavendish's of 1586 to 1588. In the margin, beside the Elizabethan arms, is a vignette of Drake's Golden Hind, and a corner picture shows Drake's landing at Nova Albion in present-day California. The ship is placed at the edge of the world she had sailed round, as the emblem of the whole achievement.
The real ship Golden Hind, originally named Pelican, was renamed by Drake on 20 August 1578 in honour of his patron Sir Christopher Hatton, whose crest was a golden hind. After carrying Drake round the world between 1577 and 1580 she was kept on public display at Deptford until around 1650.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Image: Jodocus Hondius, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Painting
Speedwell Named ship
The Departure of Puritans from Delfshaven to Join the 'Speedwell' to the New World, 1620
Artist Cornelis Liefrinck II (1581 to 1662)
Where to see it With Colnaghi, London (art dealer)
Medium Oil on panel
Offered by the London dealer Colnaghi as a work of 1620, this panel by the Leiden-born painter Cornelis Liefrinck sets the Separatists' departure among the ships of Delfshaven. Dutch flags fly from a crowd of masts, a richly decorated ship lies close to the shore beside wooden sheds, and a column of travellers in dark clothes, some with bundles on their backs, walks towards the water. Like the Willaerts, its interest lies in its closeness to the event: the Pilgrim story before it became an American legend, seen as a Dutch harbour scene.
The real ship Speedwell carried the Leiden Separatists from Delfshaven to Southampton in 1620 to meet the Mayflower; she proved unseaworthy and, after two attempts at the crossing, was left behind in England.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Image: Cornelis Liefrinck II, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Painting
Speedwell Named ship
The Departure of the Pilgrim Fathers from Delfshaven (Het vertrek van de Pilgrims uit Delfshaven), 1620
Artist Adam Willaerts (1577 to 1664)
Where to see it Rose Marie and Eijk de Mol van Otterloo Collection
Medium Painting
Museum De Lakenhal in Leiden suggests this may be a unique image, made at the time, of the Pilgrims boarding the Speedwell at Delfshaven. Willaerts, a marine painter who lived and worked in Utrecht, fills the shore with travellers under arms: the museum points to the men with muskets and helmets and a woman holding a pike, people ready to fight if they had to. Beyond them a ship with streaming pennants lies in the river while boats crowded with passengers pull out to her. If the identification is right, this is the Pilgrim voyage painted in the year it began.
The real ship Speedwell, a 60-ton pinnace, was built in 1577 as Swiftsure, fought against the Spanish and was renamed in 1605. The Leiden Separatists bought her and refitted her at Delfshaven in 1620, but she leaked so badly that after two attempts she was left behind and the Mayflower sailed alone.
Sources lakenhal.nl · Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Voyages and exploration · Drawing
Heemskerck and Zeehaen Named ship
A View of the Murderers' Bay (Moordenaersbaij), as you are at anchor here in 15 fathom, 1642
Artist Isaack Gilsemans (c. 1606 to 1646)
Where to see it Nationaal Archief, The Hague (Tasman's journal)
Medium Drawing
Gilsemans, the merchant of the Zeehaen, drew this scene on 18 December 1642 in the bay Tasman named for the men he lost there. His lettered key does the work of a witness: ‘A’ marks ‘our ships’, the Zeehaen on the left and the Heemskerck on the right; B the canoes that came around them; C the Zeehaen's boat, taken by the inhabitants while paddling to the flagship and left again after gunfire. It is the first European image of Māori, and the two small Dutch ships sit in it like visitors who do not yet understand where they are.
The real ship Heemskerck, a VOC small war yacht launched in 1638, sailed from Batavia on 14 August 1642 as Tasman's flagship with the Zeehaen. They were the first European ships to reach Tasmania and New Zealand, arriving off the South Island on 13 December 1642, and then went on to Tonga.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Image: Isaack Gilsemans, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Print
Tongan sailing canoes Unnamed
The dress, boats and dwellings of the people of Tongatapu (from Tasman's journal), 1643
Artist Isaack Gilsemans (c. 1606 to 1646)
Medium Woodcut after a drawing in Tasman's journal
The companion sheet from Tasman's journal turns from the Dutch ships to the islanders themselves, recording the dress, the boats and the dwellings of the people of Tongatapu. For the voyage it is the other half of the encounter: the craft of an ocean people, noted with a merchant's eye by a man who had sailed from Batavia by way of Tasmania and New Zealand to meet them. Here the boats of Tonga, not the ships of the Dutch East India Company, are the subject.
The vessels The canoes of Tongatapu as Tasman's expedition saw them early in 1643; the expedition left Tonga on 1 February 1643.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Image: Isaack Gilsemans, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Print
Heemskerck and Zeehaen Named ship
Tasman's ships at anchor off Tongatapu, with islanders bringing gifts (from Tasman's journal), 1643
Artist Isaack Gilsemans (c. 1606 to 1646)
Medium Woodcut after a drawing in Tasman's journal
Weeks after the bloodshed in New Zealand, Tasman's ships reached Tongatapu, and this picture from his journal has an entirely different mood. Its lettered key shows both Dutch ships in the bay at A, the islanders coming out with presents at B and E, their canoe at C, how they fish at D, and where the king lives at F. It reads like a merchant's careful record of a friendly landfall, the Dutch ships quiet at anchor while the islanders' own craft come and go around them.
The real ship Heemskerck, launched in 1638, and her consort Zeehaen sailed from Batavia on 14 August 1642 on the VOC voyage that reached Tasmania and New Zealand before turning north; they were the first Western ships to visit three of the islands now part of Tonga, and left Tonga on 1 February 1643.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Image: Isaack Gilsemans, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Print
Batavia Named ship
The Batavia under Sail and Wrecked on the Abrolhos, Plate 1 from Ongeluckige voyagie, van't schip Batavia, 1647
Artist Anonymous Dutch engraver
Source Published in Ongeluckige voyagie, van't schip Batavia (Amsterdam, 1647)
Medium Engraving
The Unlucky Voyage of the Ship Batavia, published in Amsterdam in 1647, told the story of the wreck and its aftermath, and its first plate sets out the disaster in three frames. Above, the new ship sails under full canvas; below left, she lies wrecked with her masts falling and boats pulling away towards low islands; beside it a ship rides at anchor as a boat approaches. Behind these orderly images lay one of the darkest episodes in maritime history, the massacre of about 125 survivors on the islands by the mutineers of Jeronimus Cornelisz.
The real ship Batavia, a new VOC ship and flagship of her fleet, sailed from Texel on her maiden voyage on 29 October 1628 and was wrecked on the Houtman Abrolhos off Western Australia on 4 June 1629. Many of her artefacts are at the Western Australian Shipwrecks Museum in Fremantle, and a replica is moored at Lelystad.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Voyages and exploration · Painting
HMS Centurion and Nuestra Señora de Covadonga Named ship
The Capture of the 'Nuestra Señora de Cavadonga' by the 'Centurion', 20 June 1743, c. 1745
Artist Samuel Scott (c. 1702 to 1772)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC0360, Caird Collection)
Medium Oil on canvas
Commodore Anson left England in 1740 with six ships, but by the time he reached Macao in November 1742 the Centurion was the only one left. After wintering there he set out in April 1743 to hunt the Manila galleon, and in June he caught the heavily laden Covadonga in Philippine waters. This is the moment the voyage paid for itself. Scott, who the museum notes was averse to travelling by sea and often drew his ships from models, gives the encounter the calm authority of a record painted for those who had made it.
The real ship Centurion, a 60-gun fourth-rate, was launched at Portsmouth Dockyard on 6 January 1732. She was Anson's flagship on his voyage of 1740 to 1744 and returned to Spithead on 15 June 1744, the only ship of the squadron to survive the entire voyage.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Voyages and exploration · Painting
HMS Adventure (seen from HMS Resolution) Named ship
A View of the Cape of Good Hope, Taken on the Spot, from on Board the 'Resolution', 1772
Artist William Hodges (1744 to 1797)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC1778)
Medium Oil on canvas
Painted from on board the Resolution, this is the view Hodges had as Cook's second voyage called at the Cape of Good Hope. The Adventure lies at anchor, Green Point marks the western edge of the bay, and the Dutch fort near which Cook went ashore is lit by the sun, echoing the square solidity of Table Mountain above. To the right a church tower leads the eye up the valley towards Lion's Head. It is a picture of the last familiar harbour before the voyage went on into unknown seas.
The real ship Adventure began as the North Sea collier Marquis of Rockingham, launched at Whitby in 1770 and bought by the Navy for Cook's second voyage, on which she sailed under Tobias Furneaux. She became the first ship to circumnavigate the globe from west to east, and was lost in May 1811.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Voyages and exploration · Print
HMS Endeavour Named ship
HMS Endeavour Careened for Repairs in the Endeavour River, 1770, 1773
Artist After Sydney Parkinson (c. 1745 to 1771), engraved by William Byrne
Where to see it Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane
Medium Engraving
In June 1770 the Endeavour ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef and was nearly lost; Cook had her guns thrown overboard to lighten her, and she was beached on the mainland for seven weeks while her hull was repaired. Sydney Parkinson, the voyage's natural history artist, drew her heeled over on the river shore, stores and tents laid out on the bank, while a boat is rowed across the water. Parkinson died at sea in January 1771 before the ship reached home, and his drawing reached the public in versions such as this engraving by William Byrne.
The real ship Endeavour was launched at Whitby in 1764 as the collier Earl of Pembroke, of the type known locally as the Whitby Cat; her flat-bottomed hull allowed her to be beached, and after striking the reef she lay on the Australian mainland for seven weeks for repairs.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Image: After Sydney Parkinson, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Drawing
HMS Resolution and HMS Adventure Named ship
The Resolution and Adventure, 4 Jan 1773, Taking in Ice for Water, Lat. 61 S
Artist William Hodges (1744 to 1797)
Where to see it State Library of New South Wales, Sydney (SAFE/PXD 11)
Medium Ink and watercolour
This sheet records one of the strangest chores of Cook's second voyage: taking floating ice aboard to melt for fresh water at 61 degrees south, on 4 January 1773. The Resolution lies close by a small iceberg with her sails loosely handled and a boat alongside heaped with ice, while the Adventure stands off beyond under a heavy sky. It is a working record rather than a showpiece, and that is its power: it shows the ordinary seamanship that carried these ships deeper into the Antarctic than anyone had gone before. Thirteen days later the Resolution crossed the Antarctic Circle.
The real ship Resolution began as the North Sea collier Marquis of Granby, launched at Whitby in 1770 and bought by the Navy in 1771. With Adventure she made Cook's second voyage of 1772 to 1775, becoming on 17 January 1773 the first ship to cross the Antarctic Circle. She was captured by a French squadron on 9 June 1782 and her final fate is uncertain.
Sources Google Arts & Culture · Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Voyages and exploration · Painting
Huahine canoes, seen from HMS Resolution Unnamed
View of Owharre [Fare] Harbour, Island of Huaheine [Huahine], 1773
Artist William Hodges (1744 to 1797)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC1840)
Medium Oil on canvas
Cook anchored in Fare harbour on the west of Huahine on 2 September 1773 and stayed some five days, and the museum believes Hodges painted this small oil study on the spot during that time, presumably from the ship's cabin. A towering, craggy peak rises over the bay against a vast sky and a becalmed sea, and island canoes move on the still water. The sky is laid in so thinly that the grain of the canvas shows through. It is the voyage at its most immediate: not a composed exhibition piece, but the view from the Resolution on a quiet day.
“presumably from the ship's cabin”
The vessels The vessels in the picture are Huahine canoes. The painter's viewpoint was Cook's Resolution, which with Adventure made the second voyage of 1772 to 1775; Hodges had been appointed by the Admiralty to record the places they visited.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Drawing
HMS Resolution Named ship
The 'Resolution' in the Marquesas, 1774
Artist William Hodges (1744 to 1797)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (PAF5791)
Medium Pen, ink and watercolour
Hodges, who trained under Richard Wilson, sailed with Cook on the second voyage of 1772 to 1775 with a brief to record the places visited, and the museum believes many of his finished drawings were almost certainly made on the voyage itself. This sheet shows the Resolution in the Marquesas in 1774. It carries the freshness of work done within sight of the subject: the ship not yet a legend, simply the vessel in which Hodges lived, worked and travelled.
The real ship Resolution began as the North Sea collier Marquis of Granby, launched at Whitby in 1770 and bought by the Royal Navy in 1771. She carried Cook on his second voyage of 1772 to 1775, which brought her to the Marquesas in 1774.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, where the original is kept. Photo: TxllxT, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Voyages and exploration · Painting
Tahitian war canoes Unnamed
Review of the War Galleys at Tahiti, 1776
Artist William Hodges (1744 to 1797)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC2395)
Medium Oil on panel
Here the exploring ship gives way to the craft of the islanders, and the visitors become the spectators. Hodges, appointed by the Admiralty to record the places discovered on Cook's second voyage, painted the war galleys of Tahiti gathered for review. Most of his larger oils were painted in London on his return, and the museum holds 26 oils from the voyage, 24 of them painted for or acquired by the Admiralty. This one is a reminder that the Pacific had fleets of its own when the British arrived.
The vessels The war canoes of Tahiti, which the title calls war galleys, shown assembled for review during Cook's second voyage of 1772 to 1775.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Voyages and exploration · Painting
HMS Resolution Named ship
A View of Cape Stephens in Cook's Straits with Waterspout, 1776
Artist William Hodges (1744 to 1797)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC1906)
Medium Oil on canvas
Off Cape Stephens the Resolution met waterspouts, and the astronomer William Wales recorded that one came within forty yards of the ship, one of the most terrifying incidents of the voyage. Hodges turned the moment into his most theatrical canvas: the ship with topsails clewed, lightning striking a Maori pa on the headland, seals clambering to safety and a Maori family watching from the rocks. The spouts show three stages in the forming of a single one. The small wooden ship holds the centre of a sky that seems ready to swallow her.
“He aimed to elevate landscape to the higher status of history painting”
The real ship Resolution began as the North Sea collier Marquis of Granby, launched at Whitby in 1770 and bought by the Navy in 1771. With Adventure she made Cook's second voyage of 1772 to 1775, becoming on 17 January 1773 the first ship to cross the Antarctic Circle. She was captured by a French squadron on 9 June 1782 and her final fate is uncertain.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Voyages and exploration · Painting
HMS Resolution and HMS Adventure Named ship
A View of Maitavie Bay, in the Island of Otaheite (Tahiti), 1776
Artist William Hodges (1744 to 1797)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC1932, Ministry of Defence Art Collection)
Medium Oil on canvas
Hodges was appointed by the Admiralty to record the places visited on Cook's second voyage, and this is one of four large canvases of the same size that he painted for the Admiralty on his return. Resolution and Adventure, flying the red ensign and commissioning pendants, lie at anchor in Matavai Bay, while in the foreground a large canoe carries three men and a woman. On Point Venus stands the big tent Cook raised for his coopers, his guard and his sick. The ships are small against the shore, yet the museum notes the picture uses them to show the European presence in the landscape.
The real ship Resolution began as the North Sea collier Marquis of Granby, launched at Whitby in 1770 and bought by the Navy in 1771. With Adventure she made Cook's second voyage of 1772 to 1775, becoming on 17 January 1773 the first ship to cross the Antarctic Circle. She was captured by a French squadron on 9 June 1782 and her final fate is uncertain.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Voyages and exploration · Painting
Tahitian canoe Unnamed
View of the Province of Oparree [Pare], Island of Otaheite, with part of the Island of Eimeo [Moorea], c. 1776
Artist William Hodges (1744 to 1797)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC1936)
Medium Oil on panel
The museum calls this panoramic view of Tahiti's northern shore one of Hodges's most complex paintings, with an unusual composition and a particularly free style. The islanders' canoe is cut off by the bottom edge of the panel, a daring touch that the museum says adds to the sense of vastness, while the peaks of Moorea rise across the water. The museum thinks it was painted in London in 1776 to 1777 as an overdoor, and it carries the light and air of the Pacific that Cook's second voyage brought home to Europe.
“The placement of the islanders' canoe, cut off by the bottom edge, is very unusual and adds to the sense of vastness.”
The vessels The vessel is a Tahitian canoe, paddled by islanders, seen by the artist of Cook's second voyage of 1772 to 1775 in the Resolution and Adventure.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Drawing
HMS Resolution and HMS Discovery Named ship
'Resolution' and 'Discovery' in Ship Cove, Nootka Sound, 1778
Artist John Webber (1751 to 1793)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (PAJ2959)
Medium Pen, ink and watercolour on paper
In April 1778 Cook brought his two ships into Nootka Sound, on what is now Vancouver Island, for a refit, and Webber, the voyage's official artist, drew them lying in Ship Cove with the tents and instruments of the shore observatory in the centre of the sheet. The museum calls it one of the very large roll drawings made by Hodges and Webber for the Admiralty, and the only one of this size in its collection. The ships sit quietly in a green, enclosed inlet, a rare moment of rest in a voyage that was pushing north towards the ice in search of a passage.
The real ship Resolution, a Whitby collier launched in 1770 and bought by the Navy in 1771, was Cook's ship on his second and third voyages; Discovery sailed with her on the third. Resolution was captured by a French squadron in 1782.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, where the original is kept. Photo: TxllxT, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Voyages and exploration · Painting
HMS Resolution and HMS Discovery Named ship
HMS 'Resolution' and 'Discovery' at Morea, c. 1780 to 1786
Artist John Cleveley the Younger (1747 to 1786)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC1896)
Medium Oil on canvas
A companion to Cleveley's Hawaiian scene, this canvas refers to Cook's visit to the Society Islands and shows his ships at anchor in the calm water of the bay at Moorea, the island's mountains rising into a clouded sky, while islanders and Europeans exchange goods from boats and among the houses and palm trees. Cleveley, trained under Paul Sandby at Woolwich, never went to the Pacific; he worked from material brought home by his brother James, the Resolution's carpenter, for a public eager for the South Seas. The ships here are visitors in a busy harbour, and the picture catches a brief moment of exchange.
The real ship Resolution, a Whitby collier launched in 1770 and bought by the Navy in 1771, was Cook's ship on his second and third voyages, with Discovery as her consort on the third voyage of 1776 to 1780. Resolution was captured by a French squadron in 1782.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Image: John Cleveley the Younger, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Painting
HMS Resolution and HMS Discovery Named ship
HMS 'Resolution' and 'Discovery' off Hawaii (in Kealakekua Bay), c. 1780 to 1786
Artist John Cleveley the Younger (1747 to 1786)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC1838)
Medium Oil on canvas
John Cleveley the Younger never sailed with Cook, but his brother James was carpenter of the Resolution on the third voyage, and through him John had access to material from it; he quickly made South Seas pictures for a ready market. Here the two ships lie at anchor in Kealakekua Bay, islanders in boats and among the houses and palm trees on the shore, mountains rising into a clouded sky. It is a peaceful picture of the bay where, in February 1779, Cook would be killed, and knowing that turns its calm into something close to foreboding.
The real ship Resolution, a Whitby collier launched in 1770 and bought by the Navy in 1771, was Cook's ship on his second and third voyages, with Discovery as her consort on the third voyage of 1776 to 1780. The ships anchored in Kealakekua Bay on 17 January 1779, where Cook was killed on 14 February.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Image: John Cleveley the Younger, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Drawing
HMS Racehorse and HMS Carcass Named ship
View of the 'Racehorse' and 'Carcass', 31 July 1773, late 18th century
Artist John Cleveley
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (PAF7943)
Medium Watercolour
In 1773 Constantine Phipps sailed from Deptford on 4 June with two ships, the Racehorse and the Carcass, on a voyage towards the North Pole. They went beyond Svalbard to the Seven Islands, but the ice forced them back, and they returned on 17 September. This view records the two ships on 31 July. Aboard the Carcass, commanded by Skeffington Lutwidge, was a young midshipman named Horatio Nelson, which gives these two small, stubborn ships a place in history twice over.
The real ship Racehorse and Carcass sailed under Constantine Phipps on the 1773 voyage towards the North Pole, with Skeffington Lutwidge commanding Carcass; on the voyage Phipps became the first modern European to describe the polar bear and the ivory gull.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, where the original is kept. Photo: TxllxT, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Voyages and exploration · Painting
HMS Resolution and HMS Discovery (boats) Named ship
A Party from His Majesty's Ships Resolution and Discovery Shooting Sea Horses, Latitude 71 North, 1778, 1784
Artist John Webber (1751 to 1793)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC4212)
Medium Oil on canvas
In his search for a passage through the American continent, Cook reached latitude 71 north, the furthest north then reached by a European explorer, and there his crews shot walrus for food from the ice. Webber painted the scene large after his return and showed it at the Royal Academy in 1784, turning the hunt into an epic contest between man and nature. The museum points out that the contest was in fact one-sided, since the walrus were basically harmless. After the warm paradise of Cook's earlier voyages, the ice and grey light announced something new in British voyage painting.
The real ship Resolution, a Whitby collier launched in 1770 and bought by the Navy in 1771, was Cook's ship on his second and third voyages, with Discovery as her consort on the third voyage of 1776 to 1780. She was captured by a French squadron in 1782.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Voyages and exploration · Print
Boats of HMS Resolution and HMS Discovery Named ship
The Death of Captain Cook, 1785
Artist After John Webber (1751 to 1793); figures engraved by Francesco Bartolozzi, landscape by William Byrne
Where to see it Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (17.3.887-64)
Medium Etching
Cook died at Kealakekua Bay on 14 February 1779, and Webber, the official artist of the voyage, made the image by which Europe remembered it. There were no eyewitness pictures of his death. Cook is shown about to be stabbed as he raises his arm to the marines in the boats to stop them firing on the crowd. Cambridge University Library notes that the picture served to present Cook as a hero sacrificing his life to prevent further bloodshed. The boats offshore are his only way home, and they stay out of reach.
“This image was not intended as an accurate representation of Cook's death”
The real ship Resolution and Discovery were the ships of Cook's third voyage; they had anchored at Kealakekua Bay on 17 January 1779.
Sources The Met · specialcollections-blog.lib.cam.ac.uk · Wikipedia
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
Voyages and exploration · Drawing
Boussole and Astrolabe Named ship
The Frigates of La Pérouse at Anchor in Port des Français, 1786
Artist Gaspard Duché de Vancy (1756 to 1788)
Medium Drawing
Duché de Vancy was the expedition's official artist, and this is the voyage seen from inside it: the Astrolabe and the Boussole at anchor in July 1786 in the glacier-ringed fjord the French named Port des Français, now Lituya Bay in Alaska. The drawing was made during the anchorage itself. Before the ships left, two of their boats would be lost in the currents of the fjord with 21 men. Part of the artist's drawings survived only because La Pérouse sent papers home from Kamchatka in 1787; Duché de Vancy himself died with the expedition in 1788.
The real ship Boussole and Astrolabe were 500-tonneau storeships reclassed as frigates for the voyage; with 220 men under La Pérouse and Fleuriot de Langle they left Brest on 1 August 1785 and were wrecked at Vanikoro in 1788, where Peter Dillon found their remains in 1826 to 1827.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia (FR) · Wikipedia
Image: Gaspard Duché de Vancy, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Print
HMS Sirius and HMS Supply Named ship
A View of Botany Bay, 1789
Artist Robert Cleveley (1747 to 1809)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (PAD2115)
Medium Etching with watercolour
The First Fleet's eleven ships carried more than 1,500 people, including 548 male and 188 female convicts, to found the first British prison colony in Australia, and 48 died on the way. Cleveley's print shows the flagship Sirius entering Botany Bay to join Arthur Phillip, who had arrived with an advance party in the Supply. It is a voyage picture of a different kind: not discovery but arrival, the moment a long passage ends and a new and painful history begins.
The real ship Converted from the merchant ship Berwick, probably built at Rotherhithe in 1780, Sirius was the 10-gun flagship of the eleven-vessel First Fleet and arrived in Botany Bay on 20 January 1788, two days after Supply. She was wrecked on a reef at Norfolk Island on 19 March 1790 while landing supplies.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Image: Robert Cleveley, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Painting
Earl of Pembroke (later HMS Endeavour) Named ship
The Bark, Earl of Pembroke, later Endeavour, Leaving Whitby Harbour in 1768, c. 1790
Artist Thomas Luny (1759 to 1837)
Where to see it National Library of Australia, Canberra
Medium Oil on canvas
Before she became the best-known ship in Australian history, Endeavour was a Whitby coal carrier. Luny, an English marine painter, shows her as the Earl of Pembroke leaving the harbour where she was built, with nothing yet to tell of Tahiti, New Zealand or the east coast of Australia. That is what makes the picture moving: a portrait of an ordinary merchant ship on the eve of an extraordinary life, painted some twenty years later, when her name was already famous. It was shown in the National Library of Australia's exhibition Cook and the Pacific.
The real ship Built by Thomas Fishburn at Whitby and launched in June 1764 as the collier Earl of Pembroke, she was bought by the Navy in 1768 and sailed as HMS Endeavour on Cook's first voyage of 1768 to 1771. Sold in 1775 and later renamed Lord Sandwich, she was scuttled in Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island, in 1778.
Sources flickr.com · Wikipedia
Voyages and exploration · Drawing
HMS Sirius Named ship
The Melancholy Loss of H.M.S. Sirius off Norfolk Island, March 19th 1790
Artist George Raper (1769 to 1796)
Where to see it National Library of Australia, Canberra
Medium Watercolour
Raper was there when it happened, and the drawing is signed as taken from the flagstaff on the beach. Sent to Norfolk Island with supplies, the Sirius was wrecked on the reef while landing stores on 19 March 1790, and he shows her caught in the surf, her masts going, with a great Union flag flying from the shore where the settlement watched. The loss left the young colony with a single naval vessel. Raper and his shipmates later faced a court martial in England for the loss of the ship and were honourably acquitted.
The real ship Sirius was converted from the merchantman Berwick, likely built in 1780 by Christopher Watson and Co. of Rotherhithe and bought and rebuilt by the Royal Navy in 1781. Renamed in 1786, she was the 10-gun flagship of the First Fleet and was wrecked on a reef at Norfolk Island on 19 March 1790 while landing supplies.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Voyages and exploration · Print
HMS Bounty and her launch Named ship
The Mutineers Turning Lieut Bligh and Part of the Officers and Crew Adrift from His Majesty's Ship the Bounty, 1790
Artist Robert Dodd (1748 to 1815), engraved by B. B. Evans
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (PAH9205)
Medium Hand-coloured aquatint
Published on 2 October 1790, Dodd's print fixed the mutiny in the public mind. Bligh and eighteen followers are cast adrift from the Bounty in the ship's launch, without charts, with very limited instruments and meagre rations, and cutlasses but no guns. What the viewer of 1790 already knew gave the scene its charge: the overloaded launch reached Coupang on Timor on 14 June 1789, after 41 days and more than 3,600 nautical miles. One man was killed by islanders at Tofoa; all the others survived.
“it remains the greatest open-boat survival voyage ever recorded”
The real ship Bounty was a small West Indiaman of 250 tons, formerly named Bethia, bought by the Admiralty for the voyage to carry breadfruit from Tahiti to the Caribbean. The mutiny broke out near Tonga on 28 April 1789, and the mutineers burned her at Pitcairn Island on 23 January 1790.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · portrait.gov.au · Wikipedia
Voyages and exploration · Drawing
HMS Sirius Named ship
H.M.S. Sirius Weathering Tasman's Head, 1791
Artist George Raper (1769 to 1796)
Where to see it State Library of New South Wales, Sydney (Dixson Galleries)
Medium Wash drawing
George Raper joined the Sirius as an able seaman and sailed with the First Fleet, and he is remembered today for his paintings of the voyage. Here he draws his own ship in a storm off Tasman's Head, lightning splitting the sky and seas breaking white on the cliff beside her. The Sirius had met a damaging gale off the south coast of Van Diemen's Land on her way back from the Cape with supplies for the colony, and was under repair in Sydney from June to November 1789. Raper dated this drawing 1791.
The real ship Sirius was converted from the merchantman Berwick, likely built in 1780 by Christopher Watson and Co. of Rotherhithe and bought and rebuilt by the Royal Navy in 1781. Renamed in 1786, she was the 10-gun flagship of the First Fleet and was wrecked on a reef at Norfolk Island on 19 March 1790 while landing supplies.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Voyages and exploration · Drawing
HMAT Supply Named ship
His Majesty's Brig Supply, 1790, off Lord Howe Island, c. 1792
Artist George Raper (1769 to 1796)
Medium Watercolour
After the Sirius was lost in 1790, the little Supply became the colony's only link with the outside world. Raper, who had sailed with her in the First Fleet as a seaman of the Sirius, draws her as a shipmate would: a neat two-masted brig alone on a calm sea, sails set and pennant flying, with the rocky outline of Lord Howe Island low on the horizon behind her. The inscription gives her name and the year 1790. For those in Sydney and on Norfolk Island, her sails meant food, letters and news.
The real ship Supply was an 8-gun armed tender launched in 1759 as a yard craft for ferrying naval stores. She sailed with the First Fleet, made ten trips between Port Jackson and Norfolk Island, and after the loss of Sirius was the colony's only link with the outside world; the Admiralty sold her at auction in July 1792.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Voyages and exploration · Painting
HMS Endeavour Named ship
HMS Endeavour off the Coast of New Holland, c. 1794
Artist Samuel Atkins
Where to see it National Library of Australia, Canberra (nla.pic-an5921609)
Medium Painting
Samuel Atkins painted Endeavour some twenty years after her voyage, and an inscription on the back ties the picture to her grounding on the Great Barrier Reef in June 1770, the moment Cook's whole enterprise nearly ended. The ship is shown under a full spread of sail on a quiet sea, with two of her boats pulling ahead of her. After striking the reef she had to be lightened of her guns and beached for seven weeks of repairs. Here she is the sturdy Whitby collier doing work no warship had been asked to do.
The real ship Launched at Whitby in June 1764 as the collier Earl of Pembroke, she was bought by the Navy in 1768 and commissioned as HMS Endeavour for Cook's first voyage. Sold in 1775 and later renamed Lord Sandwich, she was scuttled in Narragansett Bay in 1778.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Voyages and exploration · Print
Boats of Boussole and Astrolabe Unnamed
The Wreck of the Two Boats at Port des Français (Naufrage des deux chaloupes, au Port des Français), plate from the Atlas du Voyage de La Pérouse, 1797
Artist Nicolas-Marie Ozanne (1728 to 1811), engraved by Dequevauviller
Where to see it David Rumsey Map Collection (Atlas du Voyage de La Pérouse, Paris, 1797)
Medium Engraving
When the expedition's surviving papers reached Paris, the Republic published the voyage in 1797 with an atlas of plates, and Nicolas Ozanne, naval engineer and marine artist, drew this one of its first tragedy. Two boats are lost in the breaking current at the mouth of the Alaskan fjord the French had named Port des Français. Twenty-one men died there in July 1786, and before sailing on the expedition raised a monument to them on an island in the bay, named the Île du Cénotaphe, with an inscription buried in a bottle.
The vessels The boats belonged to Boussole and Astrolabe, the two ships of La Pérouse's expedition of 1785 to 1788; Joseph de Raxi de Flassan commanded the Astrolabe's boat.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia (FR) · Wikipedia
Image: Nicolas-Marie Ozanne, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Drawing
The First Fleet (HMS Sirius, HMS Supply and transports) Named ship
First Fleet Entering Port Jackson, January 27, 1788, from William Bradley's journal 'A Voyage to New South Wales', c. 1802
Artist William Bradley (1758 to 1833)
Where to see it State Library of New South Wales, Sydney (Safe 1/14)
Medium Wash drawing
William Bradley sailed with the First Fleet as a naval officer and a keen note-taker and sketcher, and his journal runs from the fleet's organisation at Deptford in 1786 through the voyage to Australia. In this pale wash drawing the ships come in between the sandstone headlands of Port Jackson on 27 January 1788, their sails small against a wide harbour. There is no ceremony in it, only a sailor's record of the fleet reaching the place that would become Sydney.
The real ship The First Fleet of eleven ships, led by HMS Sirius, sailed from England in 1787 with convicts, marines and seamen, reached Botany Bay in January 1788 and moved to Port Jackson to found the settlement.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Image: William Bradley, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Painting
Mayflower and her shallop Named ship
Landing of the Pilgrims, c. 1803 to 1807
Artist Michele Felice Cornè (1752 to 1845)
Where to see it The White House, Washington
Medium Oil on canvas
Cornè, born on Elba, came to Salem in 1800 aboard the Mount Vernon under Elias Hasket Derby Jr. and painted ships and harbours for New England merchants. His landing was inspired by Sam Hill's engraving on the invitation to the first meeting of the Sons of the Pilgrims, a Boston society founded in 1800. The leader wears a hat of the Napoleonic era and redcoats sit in the boat, while the ship waits offshore and Clark's Island lies in the distance. Plymouth Rock is in the foreground. It is history told by a painter of ships, and it now belongs to the White House.
“The clouds are rendered in strong, almost abstract shapes; the snow covers the shore like frosting on a cake”
The real ship Mayflower lay in Plymouth harbour through the winter of 1620 to 1621 and sailed for England on 15 April 1621.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Image: Michele Felice Cornè, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Painting
Boats of Boussole and Astrolabe Unnamed
The Wreck of La Pérouse's Boats in 1786 (Naufrage des chaloupes de La Pérouse en 1786), 1806
Artist Louis-Philippe Crépin (1772 to 1851)
Where to see it Private collection, Château de Jeurre
Medium Painting
Twenty years after the event, this painting was made for the marquis de La Borde, whose two sons were lost when the boats went down at Port des Français. Louis-Philippe Crépin, a pupil of Joseph Vernet who wrote that he had served aboard warships as a seaman from 1793, was later one of the first two artists named official painters of the French Navy. Here he gives a father's private loss the form of a marine painting, the boats caught in the currents of the Alaskan fjord. It remains in a private collection at the Château de Jeurre.
The vessels The boats came from La Pérouse's frigates Boussole and Astrolabe; two boats carrying 21 men were lost in the violent currents of the fjord, now Lituya Bay in Alaska, in July 1786.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia (FR)
Image: Louis-Philippe Crépin, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Print
HMS Isabella and HMS Alexander Named ship
First Communication with the Natives of Prince Regent's Bay, 1819
Artist After John Sackhouse
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (PAG7970)
Medium Aquatint
This print records the Royal Navy's first encounter with Inuit in the Arctic, and its inscription says it was drawn by John Sackhouse and presented to Captain Ross on 10 August 1818. It appeared as an illustration in Ross's published account of the voyage of the Isabella and Alexander. The two ships lie at the edge of the ice while officers in full uniform meet the Inuit and their dog sledges on the floe: the ships are the reason for the meeting, the link between two worlds meeting on the ice.
The real ship Isabella, under John Ross, and Alexander, under William Edward Parry, were hired vessels sent by the Admiralty in 1818 on Ross's Arctic expedition, which left London in April of that year.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Image: After John Sackhouse, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Print
HMS Fury and HMS Hecla Named ship
His Majesty's Discovery Ships Fury and Hecla, 1823
Artist Arthur Parsey; printed by Charles Joseph Hullmandel
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (PAH9224)
Medium Hand-coloured lithograph
Fury on the left and Hecla on the right: the two bomb vessels William Edward Parry took into the Arctic in search of a North-West Passage. On the voyage of 1821 to 1823 the frozen strait between Foxe Basin and the Gulf of Boothia was named after them, Fury and Hecla Strait. The museum links this print to their voyage of 1824 and 1825, and there is poignancy in the matched pair, since on that voyage Fury was so badly damaged at Prince Regent Inlet that she had to be abandoned.
The real ship Hecla, a Hecla-class bomb vessel launched in 1815, made Arctic voyages with Fury under Parry and George Lyon; Fury was abandoned at Prince Regent Inlet in 1825. Hecla was sold in 1831, became a Greenland whaler in 1834 and was wrecked in 1840.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Voyages and exploration · Drawing
HMS Beagle Named ship
The 'Beagle' in Beagle Channel, 1835 to 1836
Artist Conrad Martens (1801 to 1878)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (PAF6232)
Medium Watercolour with graphite
Another of Martens's fifteen watercolours of FitzRoy's voyage, this one shows the Beagle, with Charles Darwin aboard, sailing through the channel that bears her name on 3 March 1834. Behind the ship rise the mountains known as the Dogs Jaws, some 3,900 feet high. The little brig is dwarfed by them, and that sense of scale is exactly what the voyage recorded at the bottom of the world: a single surveying ship patiently measuring a landscape far larger than herself.
The real ship Beagle was launched at Woolwich Dockyard on 11 May 1820 as a 10-gun brig-sloop. She surveyed Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego in 1826 to 1830 and made her second voyage of 1831 to 1836 round the world with Charles Darwin aboard; recent research indicates she was sold to shipbreakers in 1870.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, where the original is kept. Photo: TxllxT, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Voyages and exploration · Drawing
HMS Beagle Named ship
Murray Narrow, Beagle Channel, 1835 to 1836
Artist Conrad Martens (1801 to 1878)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (PAF6238)
Medium Watercolour with graphite, heightened with white
Martens joined the Beagle as artist at Montevideo late in 1833, while Darwin was aboard, and this is one of fifteen watercolours he made to illustrate FitzRoy's Narrative of the voyage, worked up from a drawing of 5 March 1834. The Beagle sails through Murray Narrow, part of the Beagle Channel in Tierra del Fuego, with small boats on either side, cliffs closing in and mountains beyond. When Thomas Landseer engraved it for the book he added Fuegians fishing from canoes; the watercolour keeps the emptier, colder view of a small ship alone in a vast channel.
The real ship Beagle was launched at Woolwich Dockyard on 11 May 1820 as a 10-gun brig-sloop. She surveyed Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego in 1826 to 1830 and made her second voyage of 1831 to 1836 round the world with Charles Darwin aboard; recent research indicates she was sold to shipbreakers in 1870.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, where the original is kept. Photo: TxllxT, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Voyages and exploration · Print
Astrolabe and Zélée Named ship
The Corvettes Leaving the Pack Ice, 9 February 1838 (Les corvettes sortant de la banquise le 9 février 1838), from the Atlas pittoresque of Dumont d'Urville's Voyage au Pôle Sud, c. 1838 to 1846
Artist After Louis Le Breton (1818 to 1866), lithographed by Auguste Mayer and Sabatier, published by Gide
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (PAH0880)
Medium Lithograph
Louis Le Breton had studied medicine and sailed on Dumont d'Urville's second voyage in the Astrolabe; when the expedition's official illustrator died, he took his place. Here the Astrolabe, in the foreground, readies to join the Zélée in the distance as the two corvettes work out of the Antarctic pack on 9 February 1838. The expedition had been asked to equal Weddell's farthest south, but by the end of that February most of the crews showed signs of scurvy, and Dumont turned north to Chile. Two years later the corvettes came south again.
The real ship The Astrolabe began as the Coquille, a converted horse transport launched at Toulon in 1811, in which Duperrey circumnavigated the world in 1822 to 1825. Renamed in honour of one of La Pérouse's ships, she made two great voyages under Dumont d'Urville, the second with the Zélée from Toulon on 7 September 1837 to 6 November 1840.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Image: After Louis Le Breton, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Drawing
Tory and Cuba Named ship
Meeting of the N.Z. Company's Ships Tory and Cuba in Cook's Straits, 1840
Artist Charles Heaphy (1820 to 1881)
Where to see it National Library of New Zealand, Wellington (A-145-010)
Medium Drawing
Heaphy joined the New Zealand Company as a draughtsman in May 1839 and sailed with William Wakefield in the Tory on an expedition to buy land for settlement; his task was a visual record of the Company's work, used to advertise the country to English migrants. Here the Tory meets the Cuba in Cook Strait in 1840, two ships under sail with a small boat pulling between them. It is a picture of prelude, the moment before a colony, drawn by a young man at the start of a long New Zealand life.
The real ship Tory, the first of the New Zealand Company's surveying ships, carried the Company's advance expedition under William Wakefield and arrived in late 1839 at what became Wellington.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia · Wikidata
Voyages and exploration · Drawing
HMS Beagle Named ship
HMS 'Beagle' off Fort Macquarie, Sydney Harbour, 1841
Artist Owen Stanley (1811 to 1850)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (PAD8969)
Medium Watercolour with ink
Owen Stanley, captain of HMS Britomart and an artist of some ability, drew the Beagle at Sydney in April 1841, after both ships had returned from a survey of the Arafura Sea towards Timor. The back of the sheet is inscribed with the date, 10 April 1841. A former curator of the museum called it the best-known watercolour of the survey ship, though it shows her on her third and final voyage, when John Lort Stokes had just taken command. She appears barque-rigged, as in other pictures by men who knew her, and the small vessel to the left may be the colonial cutter Vansittart.
“the best-known watercolour image of the survey ship”
The real ship Beagle was launched at Woolwich Dockyard in 1820 as a 10-gun brig-sloop. After carrying Darwin on her second voyage she made a third and final expedition in 1837 to 1843, surveying Australian waters under John Clements Wickham and then John Lort Stokes; recent research indicates she was sold to shipbreakers in 1870.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, where the original is kept. Photo: TxllxT, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Voyages and exploration · Drawing
HMS Erebus Named ship
The Erebus Passing through the Chain of Bergs, 13 March 1842
Artist John Edward Davis (1815 to 1877)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (PW0593)
Medium Watercolour
John Edward Davis sailed on the Ross expedition as second master of the Terror under Francis Crozier, and he made many illustrations of the voyage. This small watercolour, only 11 by 18.5 centimetres, shows the Erebus passing through a chain of icebergs on 13 March 1842. It has none of the studio drama of the later oils; its force is its closeness to the event, the consort ship drawn by an officer who was there as she steered between walls of ice. Pictures like this are the nearest we can come to the expedition as its own men saw it.
The real ship Erebus was a Hecla-class bomb vessel built at Pembroke Dockyard in 1826 and refitted for exploration. She sailed with Terror on James Clark Ross's Antarctic expedition of 1839 to 1843 and, fitted with a steam engine, on Sir John Franklin's expedition of 1845; she was abandoned in 1848 and her wreck was found in September 2014.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, where the original is kept. Photo: TxllxT, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Voyages and exploration · Painting
Speedwell Named ship
Embarkation of the Pilgrims, 1843
Artist Robert Walter Weir (1803 to 1889)
Where to see it United States Capitol Rotunda, Washington, D.C. (Architect of the Capitol)
Medium Oil on canvas
Weir set his scene on the deck of the Speedwell before her departure from Delfshaven on 22 July 1620: William Brewster holds the Bible and the pastor John Robinson leads Governor Carver, William Bradford, Miles Standish and their families in prayer. The words God with us are painted on the sail above, and a rainbow on the left, a sign of hope and divine protection, is given the red, white and blue of the Dutch flag. The ship's name and the date are carved into the deck. The ship herself is the stage for a vow, though the Speedwell would leak and be left behind.
The real ship Speedwell, a 60-ton pinnace built in 1577 as Swiftsure, was bought and refitted at Delfshaven by the Leiden Separatists in 1620 and carried them to Southampton to meet the Mayflower; she leaked so badly that after two attempts she was left behind and the Mayflower sailed alone.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Image: Robert Walter Weir, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Print
Astrolabe and Zélée Named ship
Reconnaissance of Terre Adélie, 20 January 1840 (Reconnaissance de la Terre Adélie, le 20 janvier 1840), from the Atlas pittoresque of Dumont d'Urville's Voyage au Pôle Sud, 1846
Artist After Louis Le Breton (1818 to 1866), with Auguste Mayer and Léon Sabatier
Source Published in the Atlas pittoresque of Voyage au Pôle Sud et dans l'Océanie (Paris, Gide, 1846); impression in the National Library of Australia
Medium Hand-coloured lithograph
Two years after scurvy drove them from the pack, Dumont d'Urville's corvettes came south again from Hobart, and on 20 January 1840 they reconnoitred the Antarctic coast he named Terre Adélie. Le Breton, who had studied medicine and replaced the expedition's official illustrator after his death, recorded the moment, and his drawing was worked up for the great illustrated atlas of the voyage. In the same weeks the schooner Porpoise of Charles Wilkes's American expedition was working these waters; the ships sighted each other, but through poor communication no contact was made.
The real ship The Astrolabe, formerly the Coquille, and the Zélée sailed from Toulon on 7 September 1837 and returned on 6 November 1840. In early 1840 they followed the Antarctic coast and made experiments to fix the approximate position of the South Magnetic Pole before turning north for Hobart on 1 February.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Image: After Louis Le Breton, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Painting
HMS Erebus and HMS Terror Named ship
'Erebus' and 'Terror' in New Zealand, August 1841, c. 1847
Artist John Wilson Carmichael (1799 to 1868)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC1214)
Medium Oil on canvas
The companion to Carmichael's Antarctic scene shows the other face of Ross's voyage: Erebus and Terror anchored in a New Zealand bay, the country where they wintered in 1840 and returned in August 1841. The nearer ship has lowered several boats with sailors ready to meet the Maori craft in the foreground, and one canoe comes towards her offering fish, fruit and other goods. The heavy bomb vessels, rebuilt to face the ice, sit peacefully in the calm, and the meeting on the water gives the picture a warmth the polar views never have.
The real ship Erebus, built at Pembroke Dockyard in 1826, and Terror, launched at Topsham in 1813, sailed on James Clark Ross's Antarctic expedition, with Francis Crozier commanding Terror. Both were later abandoned in the Arctic ice in 1848 during Franklin's expedition.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Image: John Wilson Carmichael, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Painting
HMS Erebus and HMS Terror Named ship
HMS 'Erebus' and 'Terror' in the Antarctic, 1847
Artist John Wilson Carmichael (1799 to 1868)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC1215)
Medium Oil on canvas
Carmichael shows the two ships of James Clark Ross's Antarctic expedition as the only human presence in a world of rough peaks, glaciers and jagged rock. They are tossed in the waves as they navigate a passage through a sound, the ship on the right signalling to the other with flags, while in the foreground a whale sends up a jet of water. It was painted in 1847, two years after the same ships had sailed north with Sir John Franklin. Seen with that knowledge, the picture carries a double charge: a record of a voyage south, and an image of two ships that would never come home.
The real ship Erebus was a Hecla-class bomb vessel built at Pembroke Dockyard in 1826 and refitted for exploration. She sailed with Terror on James Clark Ross's Antarctic expedition of 1839 to 1843 and, fitted with a steam engine, on Sir John Franklin's expedition of 1845; she was abandoned in 1848 and her wreck was found in September 2014. Terror was her consort on both voyages.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Image: John Wilson Carmichael, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Painting
Santa María, Niña and Pinta Named ship
Landing of Columbus, 1847
Artist John Vanderlyn (1775 to 1852)
Where to see it United States Capitol Rotunda, Washington, D.C. (Architect of the Capitol)
Medium Oil on canvas
Commissioned by Congress in 1842 for the Rotunda of the Capitol, Vanderlyn's huge canvas shows Columbus on the beach of Guanahani, which he named San Salvador, on 12 October 1492. Bareheaded, his hat at his feet, he raises the royal banner, while the captains of the Niña and Pinta follow with the banner of Ferdinand and Isabella and islanders watch from behind a tree. Out on the sea behind the crowd the ships lie small on the horizon, the whole reach of the old world reduced to a few hulls offshore. The image travelled far beyond the Capitol on the 15-cent stamp of 1869.
The real ship Santa María, originally La Gallega, was a medium-sized nau or carrack built in Pontevedra, Galicia, the largest and slowest of Columbus's three ships in 1492, sailing with the caravels Niña and Pinta. On 24 December 1492 currents carried her onto a sandbank and she was lost.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Voyages and exploration · Drawing
HMS Rattlesnake Named ship
HMS Rattlesnake Running through the Coral Barrier on the Louisiade Archipelago, 1849
Artist Oswald Walters Brierly (1817 to 1894)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (PAF5632)
Medium Graphite and watercolour
In 1848 Captain Owen Stanley invited Brierly to join the Rattlesnake's Admiralty survey of northern and eastern Australia and New Guinea, a voyage on which the young Thomas Henry Huxley served as assistant surgeon and naturalist. This drawing, dated 1849, shows the ship running through the coral barrier of the Louisiade Archipelago. It is a picture of nerve and skill: a sailing warship threading a passage through a reef, set down by an artist who was sailing in her.
The real ship An Atholl-class 28-gun sixth-rate corvette launched at Chatham Dockyard on 26 March 1822, Rattlesnake surveyed northern Australia and New Guinea from 1846 to 1850 under Owen Stanley. She was broken up at Chatham in January 1860.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, where the original is kept. Photo: TxllxT, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Voyages and exploration · Painting
HMS Erebus Named ship
HMS 'Erebus' in the Ice, 1846, 19th century
Artist François Etienne Musin (1820 to 1888)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC3325)
Medium Oil on canvas
No artist saw Erebus in the Arctic after 1845, so the Belgian painter Musin, from Ostend, imagined her. For Franklin's last voyage she had been fitted with a steam engine and a screw propeller, and she sailed with Terror; in 1848 both were abandoned in the ice. Musin shows her surrounded by icebergs but still in open water, a gloomy sky letting only a little light onto the scene, while her crew drag boats across the ice in the foreground. Today, with her wreck found, it reads as a vigil for a ship and crew that never came home.
The real ship Erebus was a Hecla-class bomb vessel built at Pembroke Dockyard in 1826 and refitted for exploration. She sailed with Terror on James Clark Ross's Antarctic expedition of 1839 to 1843 and, fitted with a steam engine, on Sir John Franklin's expedition of 1845; she was abandoned in 1848 and her wreck was found in September 2014.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Image: François Etienne Musin, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Painting
HMS Erebus Named ship
HMS 'Erebus' Passing through the Chain of Bergs, 1842, 19th century
Artist Richard Brydges Beechey (1808 to 1895)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC3654)
Medium Oil on canvas
Beechey, a painter who rose to the rank of admiral in the Royal Navy, gave Ross's Antarctic expedition one of its oils: Erebus passing through a chain of icebergs in 1842, a moment also recorded in a small watercolour by J. E. Davis dated 13 March 1842. Ross had been given Erebus and Terror to carry out a magnetic survey in the Antarctic, and the expedition's discoveries included the area later known as the Ross Ice Barrier. The painting turns survey work into a trial of seamanship, a ship with no way on but through.
The real ship Erebus, a Hecla-class bomb vessel built at Pembroke Dockyard in 1826, sailed with Terror on James Clark Ross's Antarctic expedition of 1839 to 1843 and later disappeared with Franklin in the Canadian Arctic; her wreck was found in September 2014.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Image: Richard Brydges Beechey, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Print
HMS Investigator Named ship
The Perilous Situation of HMS 'Investigator', while Wintering in the Pack in 1850 to 1851
Artist Samuel Gurney Cresswell (1827 to 1867)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (PZ6687)
Medium Lithograph
Dedicated to Captain McClure, this large sheet by Samuel Gurney Cresswell, the ship's second lieutenant and artist, shows Investigator through her first Arctic winter, wintering in the pack and at the mercy of the moving ice. Cresswell drew it as an officer who lived through it, and the danger is not staged: the ship was later trapped at Mercy Bay for nearly three years and never escaped. It is a document of endurance made from inside the ordeal.
The real ship Investigator was built as a merchant ship by Scotts of Greenock and bought by the Admiralty in February 1848 for the search for Franklin. Under Robert McClure she was trapped in the pack ice at Mercy Bay on Banks Island and abandoned on 3 June 1853, after nearly three years; her wreck was found there in July 2010.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Image: Samuel Gurney Cresswell, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Painting
HMS Assistance Named ship
HMS 'Assistance' in the Ice, 1853
Artist Thomas Sewell Robins (1810 to 1880)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC4239)
Medium Oil on canvas
When Franklin's Erebus and Terror disappeared in the Canadian Arctic in 1845, search after search was sent to find them. Assistance, under Erasmus Ommanney in Horatio Austin's expedition of 1850 to 1851, called at Cape York in Greenland and took aboard a young Inuit guide, Kallihirua, who led the ship north to check a rumoured massacre of Franklin's men; it proved false. Robins's painting of 1853 shows her in the ice where she wintered, a ship sent to rescue others held fast herself.
The real ship Assistance served in Captain Horatio Austin's Franklin search expedition of 1850 to 1851 under Captain Erasmus Ommanney, wintering in the ice before returning to England in autumn 1851.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Image: Thomas Sewell Robins, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Print
Emigrant ship at Sydney Cove Unnamed
Sydney Cove, N.S.W.: Emigrants Leaving the Ship, 1853
Artist Oswald Walters Brierly (1817 to 1894); lithographed by Thomas Picken, printed by Day and Son
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (PAI0450)
Medium Coloured lithograph
Published on 1 June 1853, Brierly's print shows the moment a long passage ends: emigrants leaving their ship at Sydney Cove. Brierly knew Australian waters well, having sailed there as a guest on the Rattlesnake's survey of 1846 to 1850. After the long voyage out, the ship gives up her people to a new country, and the picture belongs to the other half of the story told by The Last of England: not the farewell but the arrival.
The vessels An unnamed emigrant sailing ship landing her passengers at Sydney Cove, New South Wales, in the early 1850s.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, where the original is kept. Photo: TxllxT, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Voyages and exploration · Print
HMS Investigator Named ship
HMS 'Investigator' Trapped in the Ice on the North Coast of Baring Island, 29 August 1851, 1854
Artist Samuel Gurney Cresswell (1827 to 1867), lithographed by William Simpson
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (PX8024)
Medium Coloured lithograph
Samuel Gurney Cresswell sailed as second lieutenant and ship's artist of Investigator under Robert McClure, searching for Franklin and for the North-West Passage. His sketches, later published as a folio of lithographs, include this one of the ship trapped in the ice on the north coast of Baring Island on 29 August 1851. When the ship could go no further, Cresswell carried home in autumn 1853 the news that the Passage had been found, and he is credited as the first naval officer to cross it from end to end.
The real ship Investigator was built as a merchant ship by Scotts of Greenock and bought by the Admiralty in February 1848 for the search for Franklin. Under Robert McClure she was trapped in the pack ice at Mercy Bay on Banks Island and abandoned on 3 June 1853, after nearly three years; her wreck was found there in July 2010.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, where the original is kept. Photo: TxllxT, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Voyages and exploration · Painting
Boat of the Santa María Unnamed
The First Landing of Christopher Columbus in America (Primer desembarco de Cristóbal Colón en América), 1862
Artist Dióscoro Puebla (1831 to 1901)
Where to see it Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid (P006766)
Medium Oil on canvas
Puebla, a Spanish academic painter trained in Madrid and Rome, gives the landing the full grand manner, and the Prado bought the picture from him in 1863. Columbus kneels on the rocky shore with his sword lowered, a friar raises his arm and the banners of the expedition are carried up the beach, while sailors still clamber from the boat behind them and the islanders watch from the trees. Out on the bright sea the ships are only pale sails. The voyage is over, and everything turns on the moment of arrival.
The vessels Santa María, originally La Gallega, was a medium-sized nau or carrack built in Pontevedra, Galicia, the largest and the slowest of Columbus's three ships in 1492. On 24 December 1492, with a cabin boy at the helm, currents carried her onto a sandbank and she was lost.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Image: Dióscoro Puebla, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Painting
United States (Isaac Israel Hayes's Arctic expedition ship) Named ship
Aurora Borealis, 1865
Artist Frederic Edwin Church (1826 to 1900)
Where to see it Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington (1911.4.1)
Medium Oil on canvas
Under a dark Arctic sky, the explorer Isaac Israel Hayes's ship lies frozen in the pack ice at the foot of a looming cliff, while the aurora erupts overhead and a dogsled hints at rescue. Hayes, Church's friend and pupil, gave him his sketches on returning from the Arctic in 1861, including one of the ship, and the peak in the painting had been named after Church during the expedition. During the Civil War the northern lights were widely read as a divine omen for the Union cause, and Church set a tiny light shining from the ship's window against them.
“God willing, I trust yet to carry the flag of the great Republic, with not a single star erased from its glorious Union”
The real ship Hayes led his own Arctic expedition in 1860 and 1861, departing in June 1860 aboard the schooner United States, formerly the Spring Hill of Boston, in the hope of reaching the North Pole. His book The Open Polar Sea (1867) tells the voyage.
Sources Smithsonian American Art Museum · Wikipedia
Image: Frederic Edwin Church, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Painting
Santa María Named ship
The Departure of Columbus from Palos, Spain, in 1492, 1865
Artist Emanuel Leutze (1816 to 1868)
Where to see it Williamson Art Gallery and Museum, Birkenhead (BIKGM:1166)
Medium Oil on canvas
Leutze, the German-born American history painter best known for Washington Crossing the Delaware, had returned to Columbus throughout his career, from Columbus before the Queen onwards. Here Columbus stands tall in a boat as it pulls away from the shore, one arm flung out ahead, while a woman and child cling together, a friar raises a crucifix and a young man hides his face. Above them flies the banner of the expedition, and beyond, a ship waits under sail. It is Leutze's favourite drama, the lone visionary among the fearful, set in a small crowded boat on a heaving sea.
The real ship Santa María, originally La Gallega, was a medium-sized nau or carrack built in Pontevedra, Galicia, the largest and the slowest of Columbus's three ships in 1492. On 24 December 1492, with a cabin boy at the helm, currents carried her onto a sandbank and she was lost.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Voyages and exploration · Painting
Panther Named ship
An Arctic Summer: Boring through the Pack in Melville Bay, 1871
Artist William Bradford (1823 to 1892)
Where to see it Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1982.443.1)
Medium Oil on canvas
Bradford made the first of seven Arctic expeditions in 1861, and this large canvas is based on photographs and sketches from the last of them, in 1869, when he reached about 75 degrees north aboard the Panther with funds from LeGrand Lockwood. The seal boat plies her way through the summer ice along the coast of Greenland, while in the foreground a polar bear gives a parting glance before escaping to the water. The crew, Bradford wrote, had set out to hunt it. It is an American answer to the polar sublime: a small working ship in a vast white world.
“anxious to possess so fine a skin”
The real ship Panther was the steam seal boat that carried Bradford's 1869 art expedition to Greenland, funded by LeGrand Lockwood, as far as about 75 degrees north.
Image: William Bradford, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Painting
Panther (Arctic steamer, 1869 art expedition) Named ship
The 'Panther' in Melville Bay, 1873
Artist William Bradford (1823 to 1892)
Where to see it Royal Collection Trust (RCIN 401327)
Medium Oil on canvas
In 1869 Bradford sailed north in the steamer Panther on what the Royal Collection calls an expedition solely for the purposes of art, leaving St John's, Newfoundland, on 3 July under the United States flag and returning on 3 October. Backed by the financier LeGrand Lockwood and accompanied by the photographers John L. Dunmore and George Critcherson, it was his farthest voyage north, reaching about 75 degrees. Along the Melville Bay coast of north-west Greenland he sketched the midnight sun, and this canvas records the kinds of hazards the little ship faced among the ice. He then spent two years in London, where he published The Arctic Regions.
The real ship Panther was a steamer specially built for Arctic navigation, commanded on Bradford's 1869 voyage by Captain John Bartlett.
Sources Royal Collection · Wikipedia
Image: William Bradford, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Painting
Halve Maen (Half Moon) Named ship
Discovery of the Hudson River, 1874
Artist Albert Bierstadt (1830 to 1902)
Where to see it Collection of the U.S. House of Representatives, Washington (2004.001.000)
Medium Oil on canvas
Bierstadt, the painter of the American West, campaigned at length to have this picture acquired for the House Chamber. It shows Henry Hudson bringing the Half Moon into the river valley, met by a group of Native Americans, while a rainbow, a sign of a promising beginning, spans the sky between Storm King and Crow's Nest mountains. With its companion, Entrance into Monterey, it commemorated exploration on the East and West coasts, and it hung in the House Chamber until 1901. The ship is small in that vast landscape, yet the whole picture turns on her arrival.
The real ship Halve Maen was a VOC jacht 21 metres long, commissioned by the Amsterdam Chamber of the Dutch East India Company; under Henry Hudson she entered what is now New York harbour in September 1609 and sailed up the river as far as Kinderhook. In 1618, or a few years after, she was destroyed during an English attack on Jakarta.
Sources history.house.gov · Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Image: Albert Bierstadt, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Painting
Halve Maen (Half Moon) Named ship
Henry Hudson in the Half Moon at the Highlands, c. 1875
Artist Thomas Moran (1837 to 1926)
Medium Painting
Thomas Moran, a painter and printmaker of the Hudson River School and younger brother of the marine painter Edward Moran, sets the Half Moon among the Hudson Highlands, where the river runs between mountains north of the harbour. The work is known today only from a reproduction, dated about 1875. It belongs to the same family tradition as his brother's harbour scene: the Dutch ship as the first European visitor to a landscape that American painters of the nineteenth century treated with something close to reverence.
The real ship Halve Maen was a VOC jacht 21 metres long, commissioned by the Amsterdam Chamber of the Dutch East India Company; under Henry Hudson she entered what is now New York harbour in September 1609 and sailed up the river as far as Kinderhook. In 1618, or a few years after, she was destroyed during an English attack on Jakarta.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Voyages and exploration · Print
Mayflower Named ship
The Landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, Mass., Dec. 22nd, 1620, 1876
Artist Currier and Ives (publishers, active 1857 to 1907)
Where to see it Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (63.550.429)
Medium Hand-coloured lithograph with touches of gum arabic
Currier and Ives sold American history to a wide public, and this centennial year print shows the Pilgrims coming ashore at Plymouth while, in the right background, the Mayflower lies at anchor in the bay. She is almost an afterthought in the composition, yet everything depends on her: the ship that had carried 102 passengers and a crew of about 30 across the Atlantic in some ten weeks. Prints like this helped fix the image of the ship in the American imagination.
The real ship Mayflower sailed from Plymouth, England, in September 1620 with 102 passengers and reached Cape Cod in November after about ten weeks at sea. No record of the ship exists after 1624, when she was appraised at Rotherhithe; she is believed to have been broken up.
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
Voyages and exploration · Print
Emigrant ship in the London docks Unnamed
Emigrants, 1880
Artist James Tissot (1836 to 1902)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (PAG9432)
Medium Drypoint
Tissot set his scene in the London docks: a woman carrying her child and their possessions hesitates to take the hand offered by a man below. Behind her rises a dense backdrop of masts, ropes and spars, which the museum reads as a picture of entrapment, in contrast to the two birds free in the rigging. The ship is the threshold of the whole venture, and Tissot catches the hesitation on it, hope for a better life weighed against the unknown. The painting of 1879 behind the print now survives only as a small replica.
The vessels An unnamed sailing ship taking on emigrants in the London docks, as drawn by Tissot around 1879 to 1880.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
Voyages and exploration · Print
HMS Challenger Named ship
HMS Challenger, before 1881
Artist William Frederick Mitchell (1845 to 1914)
Source Published in The Royal Navy in a Series of Illustrations
Medium Painting, published as a plate
William Frederick Mitchell painted Royal Navy and merchant ships for their officers and owners, and his numbered works run to more than 3,500. Here he gives Challenger the portrait he gave any warship, but this corvette went on to a stranger service than most. To let her probe the depths, all but two of her guns were removed and laboratories, extra cabins and a dredging platform were fitted. On her voyage of the 1870s she sailed 68,890 nautical miles on the first global survey of the oceans, organised by the Royal Society.
The real ship Challenger, a Pearl-class corvette, was launched at Woolwich Dockyard on 13 February 1858. After the Royal Society's survey voyage of the 1870s she became a receiving hulk in the Medway from 1883, and was sold on 6 January 1921 and broken up; her figurehead survives at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Image: William Frederick Mitchell, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Painting
Shallop of the Discovery Unnamed
The Last Voyage of Henry Hudson, 1881
Artist John Collier (1850 to 1934)
Where to see it Tate Britain, London (N01616)
Medium Oil on canvas
On 23 June 1611 the crew of the Discovery mutinied in Hudson Bay and cast Henry Hudson, his son and others adrift in a small boat. Collier paints them after the ship has gone: Hudson in black, grey-bearded, at the helm, staring ahead and holding the hand of the boy at his feet, while a man with a vacant gaze huddles under a fur beside them. An iceberg and a snow-covered mountain close the view. Nothing more is known of them. The painting, in the Tate since 1881, turned its viewers' minds to the Arctic searches of their own century.
The vessels Hudson's last voyage, in search of the North-West Passage, was made in the Discovery, a ship that had already sailed into Hudson Strait under George Weymouth in 1602. After the mutiny of June 1611 Hudson and his companions were set adrift in a small boat and never seen again, and the Discovery returned to England.
Voyages and exploration · Painting
Mayflower Named ship
The Mayflower on Her Arrival in Plymouth Harbor, 1882
Artist William Formby Halsall (1841 to 1919)
Where to see it Pilgrim Hall Museum, Plymouth, Massachusetts
Medium Oil on canvas
Halsall, born in Kirkdale in England, settled in Massachusetts and became one of its marine painters, and this is his picture of the Mayflower at rest in Plymouth harbour, painted in 1882 and now at Pilgrim Hall Museum in Plymouth. There is no crowd and no rock, only the ship that had carried 102 passengers and a crew of about 30 across the Atlantic in the autumn of 1620. She stayed in the harbour through the hard first winter, while her own sailors were decimated by disease, and sailed for England in April 1621.
The real ship Mayflower, an English square-rigged merchant ship of about 180 tons, sailed from Plymouth on 16 September 1620 with 102 passengers, lay in Plymouth harbour through the winter of 1620 to 1621 and sailed for England on 15 April 1621. She was appraised at Rotherhithe in 1624 and is believed to have been broken up.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Image: William Formby Halsall, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Painting
Polaris Named ship
The 'Polaris', Far North, 1882
Artist William Bradford (1823 to 1892)
Where to see it Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto (962.33.3)
Medium Oil on canvas
Bradford painted Charles Francis Hall's Polaris a decade after her loss: a dark-hulled steamer held fast in the ice beneath towering icebergs, while figures work among boats and stores dragged out across the floe. The Polaris expedition of 1871 to 1873 reached 82° 29′ N by ship, a record at the time, but Hall died at Thank God Harbor, nineteen of the party drifted six months on an ice floe, and the damaged ship was run aground near Etah in October 1872. In Bradford's sombre light the ship already looks like a camp as much as a vessel.
The real ship Polaris was the ship of the United States government-funded Arctic expedition under Charles Francis Hall; she reached a record 82° 29′ N in 1871, wintered at Thank God Harbor, and was run aground and wrecked near Etah, Greenland, in October 1872.
Image: William Bradford, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Painting
SS Lusitania Named ship
Coming South, 1886
Artist Tom Roberts (1856 to 1931)
Where to see it National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (acquired 1967)
Medium Painting
Tom Roberts based this painting on sketches he made when returning to Australia aboard the steamship Lusitania in 1885, after four years in Europe. It shows migrants coming to Australia from Europe on the deck of the ship during the long passage. The National Gallery of Victoria calls it a definitive image of the migrant experience and Roberts's first exploration of one of the great themes of Australian life. The ship is a whole temporary world here, the place where old lives end and new ones have not yet begun.
“a definitive image of the migrant experience”
The real ship Roberts sailed home to Australia in 1885 aboard the steamship Lusitania, and the painting grew from the sketches he made on board.
Sources Wikipedia
Voyages and exploration · Painting
SS Vega Named ship
The Explorer A. E. Nordenskiöld, 1886
Artist Georg von Rosen (1843 to 1923)
Where to see it Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (NM 1396)
Medium Oil on canvas
Von Rosen painted Nordenskiöld in 1886 standing in the foreground in a black fur with a telescope, while the Vega lies in the pack ice behind him. In 1878 to 1880 the ship carried him through the Northeast Passage along the north coast of Eurasia. The canvas, more than three metres high, was given to the Nationalmuseum in 1887 by Oscar Dickson. The ship is placed in the portrait like a coat of arms: without her the man would be only a scientist, with her he is an explorer.
The real ship Built at Bremerhaven in 1872 as a barque with a 60 hp auxiliary steam engine, Vega left Karlskrona on 22 June 1878 for the Northeast Passage and was held in the ice from 28 September 1878 until 18 July 1879, only 120 miles short of the Bering Strait. She was reported sunk in Melville Bay, west of Greenland, in 1903.
Sources Wikipedia (SV) · Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Image: Georg von Rosen, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Painting
Mayflower Named ship
The Return of the Mayflower, 1886
Artist L. Birge Harrison (1854 to 1929)
Where to see it Private collection (sold at Treadway Toomey Auctions, 2015)
Medium Painting
In April 1621 the Mayflower sailed for England and left the survivors of the first winter behind. Harrison paints not the ship but someone who stays: a woman in a long dark cloak on a bare, sandy shore, one hand reaching out towards a tiny sail on the bright horizon. The ship is almost nothing, a small shape on the light, and yet she carries the whole feeling of the picture, the last link with home slipping away. Harrison, a Philadelphia-born painter of genre and landscape, made it in 1886.
The real ship Mayflower lay in Plymouth harbour through the winter of 1620 to 1621, while her own crew was decimated by disease, and set sail for England on 15 April 1621.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Image: L. Birge Harrison, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Drawing
Santa María (study) Named ship
Ship Study for The Landing of Columbus (from a sketchbook), c. 1891
Artist Albert Bierstadt (1830 to 1902)
Where to see it The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1995.379.3c recto, Bequest of Marguerite H. Rohlfs, 1995)
Medium Graphite on wove paper, in a bound sketchbook
Before painting the ships for his Landing of Columbus, Bierstadt worked them out in a small pocket sketchbook, now in the Metropolitan Museum. This page shows his working mind: a quick, sure outline of a three-masted hull with a high stern, long yards and a boat alongside, with a pencil note in the corner. It is the opposite of the finished canvas, with no light and no drama, only a painter trying to get the rig right for a ship that no one had drawn from life.
The real ship Santa María, originally La Gallega, was a medium-sized nau or carrack built in Pontevedra, Galicia, the largest and the slowest of Columbus's three ships in 1492. On 24 December 1492, with a cabin boy at the helm, currents carried her onto a sandbank and she was lost.
Sources The Met · Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Voyages and exploration · Painting
Halve Maen (Half Moon) Named ship
Henrik Hudson Entering New York Harbor, September 11, 1609, 1892
Artist Edward Moran (1829 to 1901)
Where to see it Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts
Medium Oil on canvas
Edward Moran, an English-born marine painter who made his name in Philadelphia, painted this arrival of the Half Moon in 1892, when he was deep in his most important project, a series of thirteen paintings on the maritime history of the United States in which Henry Hudson had a place. The date in the title, 11 September 1609, fixes the moment the Dutch ship came into the harbour that would become New York. The picture now belongs to the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, one of the founding images of the city seen from the sea.
The real ship Halve Maen was a VOC jacht 21 metres long, commissioned by the Amsterdam Chamber of the Dutch East India Company; under Henry Hudson she entered what is now New York harbour in September 1609 and sailed up the river as far as Kinderhook. In 1618, or a few years after, she was destroyed during an English attack on Jakarta.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Voyages and exploration · Print
Santa María, Niña and Pinta Named ship
Columbus Taking Possession of the New Country, 1893
Artist L. Prang and Co., Boston (publisher)
Where to see it Library of Congress, Washington (Prints and Photographs, cph.3b49587)
Medium Colour print
Published by the Prang firm of Boston in 1893, this bright colour print put the landing within reach of ordinary American homes. Columbus kneels with drawn sword beside the royal standard, his companions hold the banners of the expedition, and behind them the three ships lie close inshore in a turquoise bay, their castles, pennants and furled sails drawn with loving clarity while boats bring men ashore. The ships are the most carefully made thing in the picture, as if the printer knew they were what people wanted to see.
The real ship Santa María, originally La Gallega, was a medium-sized nau or carrack built in Pontevedra, Galicia, the largest and the slowest of Columbus's three ships in 1492. On 24 December 1492, with a cabin boy at the helm, currents carried her onto a sandbank and she was lost.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Image: L. Prang and Co., Boston, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Painting
Santa María, Niña and Pinta Named ship
The Landing of Columbus, c. 1893
Artist Albert Bierstadt (1830 to 1902)
Where to see it City of Plainfield, New Jersey
Medium Oil on canvas
Bierstadt made the landing a landscape of wonder. Great trees and palms frame a golden beach, islanders watch from the shade, and Columbus's party gathers on the sand with banners beside their boats while the ships ride at anchor out on a glowing sea. At about 1.8 by 3 metres it is a public picture, now owned by the City of Plainfield in New Jersey, and the little ships are placed like punctuation at the end of a long sentence of light. A sketchbook in the Metropolitan Museum preserves his pencil studies of the ships for it.
The real ship Santa María, originally La Gallega, was a medium-sized nau or carrack built in Pontevedra, Galicia, the largest and the slowest of Columbus's three ships in 1492. On 24 December 1492, with a cabin boy at the helm, currents carried her onto a sandbank and she was lost.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Image: Albert Bierstadt, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Painting
Monção river canoes at Araritaguaba Unnamed
Departure of the Monsoon (Partida da Monção), 1897
Artist José Ferraz de Almeida Júnior (1850 to 1899)
Where to see it Museu Paulista (Museu do Ipiranga), São Paulo
Medium Oil on canvas
A monção was a river expedition from São Paulo into the far interior, and this canvas shows the last moments before one leaves the port of Araritaguaba, now Porto Feliz, on the Tietê, bound for Cuiabá in Mato Grosso. An elderly priest, perhaps the painter's early patron Father Miguel Correa Pacheco, blesses the departure; families watch, and a child covers its face and weeps. Along the bank the monçoeiros already sit in their canoes, and one man, a foot on the gunwale, pulls the rope that still holds his boat to land. The whole picture is a farewell.
The vessels The monções were river convoys that carried people and cargo from São Paulo down the Tietê towards the goldfields of Cuiabá, discovered in 1718; convoys were already making the dangerous journey in 1720.
Sources Wikipedia (PT)
Image: José Ferraz de Almeida Júnior, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Painting
HMS Resolution and HMS Adventure Named ship
HMS Resolution, Captain Jas Cook, and HMS Adventure, Captain Furneaux, off Cape Palliser, New Zealand, in 1773, 1898
Artist Matthew Thomas Clayton (1831 to 1922)
Where to see it Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Auckland (1899/3)
Medium Oil on canvas
Clayton shows Resolution driving through a heavy green sea under shortened sail, while Adventure is only a small shape far off beneath a stormy sky. Off this coast in October 1773 the two ships were caught by one of the spring gales common to Cook Strait: Resolution lost her fore topgallant mast and her sails were shredded, Adventure was blown to leeward and found again, and then, early on 30 October, the two ships parted company for the last time. Cook searched the bays for her and finally left Cape Palliser on 26 November without his consort.
The real ship Resolution and Adventure sailed together on Cook's second voyage. After their final separation off New Zealand in 1773, Furneaux in Adventure made landfall near Cape Palliser, while Cook, failing to find him, continued the exploration of the southern Pacific alone in Resolution.
Sources Wikidata · Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Image: Matthew Thomas Clayton, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Print
São Gabriel and Gama's fleet Named ship
The Arrival of Vasco da Gama at Calicut in 1498 (A chegada de Vasco da Gama a Calicute em 1498), c. 1900
Artist Alfredo Roque Gameiro (1864 to 1935)
Where to see it Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, Lisbon (E. 292 A.)
Medium Colour print
Roque Gameiro, a Portuguese painter, watercolourist and illustrator who worked on a deluxe edition of The Lusiads published in 1900, pictures the end of the sea road to India as a crowded ceremony. Gama and his men come ashore at Calicut among dense crowds of townspeople, a canopied palanquin waits, and temples and palms rise behind. Far out in the bright water his ships lie at anchor. The picture makes the small ships the key that opened a whole world, as Portugal's patriotic art of the time wished.
The real ship Gama's fleet of 1497 was led by the naus São Gabriel and São Rafael with the caravel Berrio; it left Malindi on 24 April 1498 and landed near Kozhikode (Calicut) on 20 May 1498, completing the sea route from Europe to India.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Image: Alfredo Roque Gameiro, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Painting
Cabral's fleet Unnamed
The Landing of Pedro Álvares Cabral at Porto Seguro in 1500 (Desembarque de Pedro Álvares Cabral em Porto Seguro em 1500), 1900
Artist Oscar Pereira da Silva (1867 to 1939)
Where to see it Museu Paulista da Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo
Medium Oil on canvas
Finished in 1900, four hundred years after the event, this canvas established Pereira da Silva as a leading painter in Brazil, and it is now the most widely reproduced image of the landing in school books. The picture is divided into two clear zones. On the beach the Indigenous people run and gather among the trees; on the water the Portuguese come in by boat, and behind them the fleet lies at anchor with red crosses on its sails and banners. The ships are the frontier between two worlds.
The vessels Cabral's fleet of 13 ships and about 1,500 men sailed from Lisbon on 9 March 1500 bound for India and anchored off the Brazilian coast on 22 April 1500, near the mountain Cabral named Monte Pascoal.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia (PT) · Wikipedia
Image: Oscar Pereira da Silva, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Painting
Varangian longships on the route to Novgorod Unnamed
Guests from Overseas (Zamorskie gosti), 1901
Artist Nicholas Roerich (1874 to 1947)
Where to see it State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
Medium Oil on canvas
In 1899 Roerich travelled the great waterway to Novgorod and wrote that it was wonderful and terrible to realise that Varangian boats had once sailed these very waters. That journey gave him the subject, which he painted two years later in Paris. The long boats with their red sails move across a dark blue river, and the elements come straight from Old Russian icon painters and applied art, arranged with the flat, decorative clarity of a panel; Roerich himself subtitled the work folk painting. Nicholas II bought it in 1902 for the palace at Tsarskoye Selo, and it now hangs in the Tretyakov Gallery.
The vessels The boats evoke the ladyi of the Varangians, the Norse travellers whose route the painter followed along the great waterway to Novgorod.
Sources Wikipedia (RU) · Wikimedia Commons
Image: Nicholas Roerich, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Painting
HMS Endeavour and her boats Named ship
Landing of Captain Cook at Botany Bay, 1770, 1902
Artist E. Phillips Fox (1865 to 1915)
Where to see it National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (119-2, Gilbee Bequest 1902)
Medium Oil on canvas
Painted in Britain in 1902 and acquired for Melbourne through the Gilbee Bequest that same year, this is the most important of Fox's official commissions and shows the clear influence of his teacher Gérôme. Cook stands on the sand with his arm outstretched while a sailor behind him holds the red ensign aloft; on the rise ahead, two Aboriginal men raise their spears. Beyond the boats drawn up in the shallows the Endeavour lies off the shore under sail, the ship that had brought the first Europeans to this coast.
The real ship Endeavour was launched at Whitby in June 1764 as the collier Earl of Pembroke and bought by the Navy in 1768 for Cook's first voyage of 1768 to 1771, on which she reached the east coast of Australia and Cook went ashore at Botany Bay.
Sources NGV · Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Image: E. Phillips Fox, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Drawing
James Caird Named ship
In Sight of Our Goal: Nearing South Georgia (illustration in Shackleton's South), 1916 to 1919
Artist Attributed to George Marston (1882 to 1940)
Source Published in Ernest Shackleton, South (London, 1919)
Medium Drawing, reproduced in half-tone
George Marston was the expedition's artist, and while the men were marooned on Elephant Island some of his oil paints were used to caulk the very boat shown here. The James Caird climbs a huge grey sea under her small sails, the men hunched low, while the mountains of South Georgia rise through the spray ahead. After a voyage of 17 days and some 1,300 kilometres across the Southern Ocean, this was the sight that meant rescue; in the end the whole crew of the Endurance came home alive.
The real ship James Caird, a 22.5-foot (6.9-metre) boat from Endurance named after the Dundee philanthropist Sir James Key Caird, was strengthened by the carpenter Harry McNish and sailed 1,300 kilometres from Elephant Island to South Georgia in 1916 with Shackleton and five companions. She has been on display at Dulwich College since 1922.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Image: Attributed to George Marston, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Drawing
James Caird, Dudley Docker and Stancomb Wills Named ship
'There was no Sleep for us that Night, so we lit the Blubber Stove' (illustration in Shackleton's South), 1916 to 1919
Artist George Marston (1882 to 1940)
Source Published in Ernest Shackleton, South (London, 1919)
Medium Drawing, reproduced in half-tone
After Endurance was crushed and sank, her crew camped on the drifting ice with the three boats they had saved, and George Marston, who helped design the tents used on the floe, drew what it was like. Figures gather around a smoking blubber stove on a small floe, the boats hauled up beside them, while open water and broken ice stretch away to the horizon. The boats are the most precious objects in the picture: everything depended on them, and when the ice broke up in April 1916 they carried the whole party to Elephant Island.
The real ship The three boats of Endurance were named by Shackleton after principal backers of the expedition: James Caird, Dudley Docker and Stancomb Wills. The party took to them on 8 April 1916 as the ice broke up and reached Elephant Island after seven days; the James Caird then sailed on to South Georgia.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Voyages and exploration · Painting
Santa María, with Niña and Pinta Named ship
Ships of Christopher Columbus, 1927
Artist N. C. Wyeth (1882 to 1945)
Where to see it Library of Congress, Washington (reproduction, LC-USZC2-3751)
Medium Painting (known from a Library of Congress colour reproduction)
Wyeth, the American painter and illustrator, paints the Santa María as an adventure. She drives through breaking seas, red crosses on her sails and a banner streaming from the masthead, while two small ships follow on the horizon under a sky of orange and blue with the sun low on the sea. There is no landing and no ceremony, only the ship alone on the ocean, which is where the voyage really happened. The picture dates from 1927 and survives in the Library of Congress as a colour reproduction.
The real ship Santa María, originally La Gallega, was a medium-sized nau or carrack built in Pontevedra, Galicia, the largest and the slowest of Columbus's three ships in 1492. On 24 December 1492, with a cabin boy at the helm, currents carried her onto a sandbank and she was lost.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Voyages and exploration · Painting
Pourquoi-Pas? Named ship
Departure of the Pourquoi-Pas? in Search of Nobile (Départ du Pourquoi-Pas? à la recherche de Nobile), 1928
Artist Anonymous
Where to see it Musée national de la Marine, Paris (11 OA 296)
Medium Oil on panel
A quick, direct oil sketch dated 1928 shows Charcot's white-hulled Pourquoi-Pas? moored bow on at the quay, her yards squared and rigging dense against a grey sky, a sailor on the quayside and a small crowd gathered to see her off. That year she sailed north on a rescue mission: to search for the French flying boat Latham 47, lost with Roald Amundsen aboard while he was himself looking for Umberto Nobile and the airship Italia. The ship of the Antarctic here becomes a ship of hope, leaving on a search for men already lost in the ice.
The real ship Built at Saint-Malo by François Gautier and launched in 1908, the 40 m three-masted barque Pourquoi-Pas?, with an auxiliary motor and three laboratories, carried Charcot's second Antarctic expedition of 1908 to 1910 and many Arctic voyages. She was wrecked off Iceland on 16 September 1936 with Charcot aboard; of the forty men, only one survived.
Sources Wikidata · Wikipedia · Wikipedia (FR)
Voyages and exploration · Print
HMS Centurion and Nuestra Señora de Covadonga Named ship
Anson's 'Centurion' Taking the Spanish Galleon 'Nuestra Señora de Cabadonga', 1743, before 1934
Artist Charles Dixon (1872 to 1934)
Medium Painting, reproduced in a book
Charles Dixon painted Anson's great prize for a generation that knew the voyage as one of the heroic stories of the Royal Navy. His picture shows the Centurion taking the Spanish galleon off Cape Espiritu Santo in the Philippines on 20 June 1743, the treasure ship that made the long and costly voyage worth its losses. Where Samuel Scott's version is a calm record painted for those who had been there, Dixon's belongs to the age of illustrated histories, when the Centurion's fight was retold as a tale of daring for readers at home.
The real ship Centurion was Anson's flagship on the 1740 to 1744 voyage; she took the Covadonga on 20 June 1743 near Cape Espiritu Santo in the Philippines and brought her into Canton, where the galleon was sold.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Voyages and exploration · Painting
A First Fleet ship at anchor in Sydney Cove Unnamed
The Founding of Australia. By Capt. Arthur Phillip R.N. Sydney Cove, Jan. 26th 1788, 1937
Artist Algernon Talmage (1871 to 1939)
Where to see it State Library of New South Wales, Sydney (ML 1222)
Medium Oil sketch
The Australasian Pioneers Club commissioned Talmage to paint the founding of the colony for the 150th anniversary of 1938, and the finished picture was unveiled at the Royal Academy in London in 1937; this oil sketch belongs to the State Library of New South Wales. Governor Phillip and his officers stand beneath the newly raised Union flag at Sydney Cove, marines drawn up in red, while out on the still water of the cove a ship of the First Fleet lies at anchor. The painting was made as a celebration of empire and is read very differently today; the ship is the quiet witness to both views.
The vessels The First Fleet of eleven ships, led by HMS Sirius, moved from Botany Bay to Port Jackson and anchored in Sydney Cove, where the colony was founded on 26 January 1788.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Image: Algernon Talmage, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Painting
Santa María Named ship
The Santa Maria at Sea, before 1939
Artist Michael Zeno Diemer (1867 to 1939)
Where to see it Private collection
Medium Oil on masonite
Diemer was first famous for vast panoramic battle paintings and is now known chiefly for his marine paintings and postcard designs. Here the Santa María comes straight at us out of a dark swell, her bluff bow throwing up spray and her worn red sails full, with, as the work's description records, the figure of Columbus at the bow. It is the voyage reduced to its essentials: one ship, one man and the open sea.
The real ship Santa María, originally La Gallega, was a medium-sized nau or carrack built in Pontevedra, Galicia, the largest and the slowest of Columbus's three ships in 1492. On 24 December 1492, with a cabin boy at the helm, currents carried her onto a sandbank and she was lost.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Image: Michael Zeno Diemer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Voyages and exploration · Print
Isabella of Hull Named ship
The Arctic Ocean: Captain Ross and the Crew of the 'Victory' Saved by the 'Isabella' of Hull, undated
Artist After John Ross (1777 to 1856)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (PAD6090)
Medium Coloured engraving
After four winters stranded in the Arctic, John Ross and the crew of the Victory were rescued in 1833, when many people in England believed them dead. By coincidence the ship that found them was the Isabella, the vessel Ross himself had commanded in 1818, since returned to Hull as an Arctic whaler. Her astonished crew told Ross that he had been dead for two years. Few coincidences in the history of the sea are so complete, and the print catches the moment a lost expedition is handed back to the world.
The real ship Isabella was the hired vessel Ross commanded on his Arctic voyage of 1818, with Alexander under William Edward Parry, before returning to Hull as a whaler. In 1833 she rescued Ross's party, who had left their ship Victory, a side-wheel steamer financed by Felix Booth, on 29 May 1832.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, where the original is kept. Photo: TxllxT, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Voyages and exploration · Drawing
HMS Beagle Named ship
HMS 'Beagle' at Anchor in a Calm, undated
Artist Oswald Walters Brierly (1817 to 1894)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (PAD9324)
Medium Graphite and watercolour
A small sheet by Brierly, who later sailed with the Rattlesnake on her survey of northern Australia and New Guinea, shows Darwin's Beagle at anchor in a calm. After the famous voyage with Darwin, the Beagle went on to a third commission surveying large parts of the Australian coast from 1837 to 1843. Here she is simply at rest, and the stillness is the point: a working survey ship caught between voyages, as her crews must often have known her.
The real ship A Cherokee-class 10-gun brig-sloop launched at Woolwich Dockyard in 1820, Beagle carried Darwin in 1831 to 1836 and surveyed large parts of the Australian coast from 1837 to 1843. In 1870 she was sold to be broken up.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, where the original is kept. Photo: TxllxT, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Voyages and exploration · Print
HMS Challenger Named ship
Challenger at Kerguelen, undated
Artist John James Wild (1824 to 1900)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (PBD4528)
Medium Coloured lithograph
Wild sailed with the Challenger expedition of 1872 to 1876, the first great voyage devoted to the science of the sea, and here he shows the ship at the remote island of Kerguelen. To let her probe the depths, all but two of her guns had been removed and laboratories, extra cabins and a dredging platform installed, and she carried 181 miles of Italian hemp for sounding and dredging. The picture shows a warship turned scientific instrument, at the far edge of the world.
The real ship Launched at Woolwich Dockyard on 13 February 1858, the Pearl-class corvette Challenger sailed from Portsmouth on 21 December 1872 with George Nares in command and Charles Wyville Thomson as chief scientist, covering 68,890 nautical miles. She was sold in 1921 and broken up; her figurehead survives at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, where the original is kept. Photo: TxllxT, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Voyages and exploration · Painting
Leif Erikson's ship Unnamed
Leif Erikson Discovers America, undated
Artist Hans Dahl (1849 to 1937)
Medium Painting
Dahl, a Norwegian painter who worked between Norway and Germany, stages the first European landfall in America as a saga. Leif, red-cloaked and helmeted with an axe in his hand and a shield on his back, stands on a rocky headland looking inland while his armed men climb up behind him, one pointing ahead. Below them their ship lies off the rocks with her crew still aboard and a small boat pulling in. Half a millennium before Columbus, the ship is the whole claim of the picture.
The vessels According to the sagas of Icelanders, Leif Erikson, son of Erik the Red who founded the first Norse settlement in Greenland, sailed west and established a settlement at Vinland, usually interpreted as coastal North America, about five hundred years before Columbus.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Voyages and exploration · Drawing
HMS Beagle Named ship
Mount Sarmiento, Tierra del Fuego, Showing the Survey Ship HMS 'Beagle', undated
Artist Conrad Martens (1801 to 1878)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (PAF6229)
Medium Watercolour
Here the Beagle is shown beneath Mount Sarmiento in Tierra del Fuego, a mountain and a ship as the whole subject. Martens joined her late in 1833 as replacement draughtsman and there began his lifelong friendship with Darwin, who sailed as the captain's gentleman companion and a self-financing naturalist. Later, in Sydney, Darwin and FitzRoy commissioned from Martens paintings of the Beagle's voyages in Tierra del Fuego and the Pacific. The picture keeps one small ship in the scale of a wild coast.
The real ship A Cherokee-class 10-gun brig-sloop launched at Woolwich Dockyard in 1820, Beagle carried Darwin round the world in 1831 to 1836 under Robert FitzRoy. In 1870 she was sold to be broken up.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, where the original is kept. Photo: TxllxT, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Voyages and exploration · Painting
HMS Terror Named ship
Perilous Position of HMS 'Terror', Captain Back, in the Arctic Regions in the Summer of 1837, undated
Artist William Smyth (1800 to 1877)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC3655)
Medium Oil on canvas
Years before she vanished with Franklin, Terror nearly died in the ice under George Back, on his expedition to find a sea route from Hudson Bay to the Polar Sea. Trapped near Southampton Island, she was held in the ice for ten months, and at one point the pressure forced her some twelve metres up the face of a cliff of ice. William Smyth, a naval officer and artist, paints her heeled and lifted on the grinding floes under a moonlit sky while her men haul a boat. She nearly sank on the way home, and Back beached her at Rathmullan in Ireland, yet she was repaired and sent to sea again.
The real ship Terror was a Vesuvius-class bomb vessel built at Topsham in Devon and launched in June 1813; she took part in the bombardment of Fort McHenry in 1814. Converted for polar service, she sailed with Back in 1836 to 1837, with Ross to the Antarctic in 1839 to 1843 and with Franklin from 1845; her wreck was found in Terror Bay in September 2016.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Voyages and exploration · Drawing
HMS Beagle Named ship
The Survey Ship HMS 'Beagle' Running into Berkeley Sound, Falkland Islands, undated
Artist Conrad Martens (1801 to 1878)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (PAF6227)
Medium Watercolour
In Montevideo late in 1833 FitzRoy engaged Martens as draughtsman to replace the Beagle's artist Augustus Earle, who had fallen ill, and Martens began a lifelong friendship with Darwin. This watercolour shows the Beagle running into Berkeley Sound in the Falkland Islands. Martens left the ship at Valparaiso in 1834 and settled in Sydney, and when the Beagle arrived there in 1836 Darwin and FitzRoy commissioned paintings of the voyage from him. The small ship carries the memory of a voyage the three men had shared.
The real ship A Cherokee-class 10-gun brig-sloop launched at Woolwich Dockyard on 11 May 1820, Beagle carried Darwin round the world in 1831 to 1836 under Robert FitzRoy. In 1870 she was sold to be broken up.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, where the original is kept. Photo: TxllxT, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
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