The Lure of the Ocean 2022

The Lure of the Ocean

"The sea, once it casts its spell, holds us in its net of wonder forever."

As many of you will know, Gladwell & Company resided in the City of London for 260 years until the gallery moved to Beauchamp Place in 2012.

During this time the City was the hub of the marine world whether through insurance or shipping. As a result, our gallery supplied fine art to some of the most knowledgeable marine experts in the world. This meant that the artists whom we represented had to be technically correct in every way - they had to know the technical details of the ships, the weather conditions and the sail settings to accommodate the weather portrayed and the variatons in the di erent oceans around the world.

In most every case, these artists achieved this because of their experience on the very vessels they portrayed. In Chapelet’s case he was Chancellor of the Cape Horners, that is people who have actually sailed round Cape Horn, reputably the provider of the worst storms in the world. Derek Gardner was on the North Sea Convoys (not on sailing ships I hasten to add ) but in reputably bad weather. One beautiful tale to represent the level of the attention to detail and accuracy that these

artists prided themselves on is, I recall, when a customer commissioned Derek Gardner to paint a picture of a vessel the client's ancestor sailed on. When the client viewed the finished work he threw up his hands in despair as the artist had portrayed an 84 gun, two deck ship and the client was expecting a 104 gun, three deck vessel. We returned to the artist who promptly advised us that half way through the building the Admiralty had changed the specification to a “cruiser” rather than a battleship, which is what he had painted. On advising the client his hands went up again because earlier he had commissioned Basset's, the model builders, to make a model from the original plans, so he ended up with a model of a ship that his ancestor had never sailed on.

I sincerely trust that you will find this small catalogue specialising in the marine world interesting and enjoyable. I have included biographies of the vessels together with illustrations of some of my own collection of models with the aim of bringing the paintings even more to life.

Anthony Fuller

Admirals All - A Song of Sea Kings

A Song of Sea Kings

EFFINGHAM, Grenville, Raleigh, Drake, Here's to the bold and free!

Benbow, Collingwood, Byron, Blake, Hail to the Kings of the Sea!

Admirals all, for England's sake, Honour be yours and fame!

And honour, as long as waves shall break,

To Nelson's peerless name!

With the galleons fair in sight; Howard at last must give him his way,

And the word was passed to fight. Never was schoolboy gayer than he,

Since holidays first began:

He tossed his bonnet to wind and sea,

And under the guns he ran. Drake nor devil nor Spaniard feared, Their cities he put to the sack;

He singed His Catholic Majesty's beard, And harried his ships to wrack.

He was playing at Plymouth a rubber of bowls

When the great Armada came;

But he said, "They must wait their turn, good souls," And he stooped and finished the game. Fifteen sail were the Dutchmen bold, Duncan he had but two;

But he anchored them fast where the Texel shoaled,

And his colours aloft he flew.

"I've taken the depth to a fathom," he cried,

"And I'll sink with a right good will:

For I know when we're all of us under the tide

My flag will be fluttering still."

Splinters were flying above, below,

When Nelson sailed the Sound:

"Mark you, I wouldn't be elsewhere now,"

Said he, "for a thousand pound!"

The Admiral's signal bade him fly

But he wickedly wagged his head:

He clapped the glass to his sightless eye,

And "I'm damned if I see it!" he said.

Admirals all, they said their say

(The echoes are ringing still).

Admirals all, they went their way

To the haven under the hill.

But they left us a kingdom none can take --

The realm of the circling sea --

To be ruled by the rightful sons of Blake,

And the Rodneys yet to be.

Admirals all, for England's sake, Honour be yours and fame!

And honour, as long as waves shall break, To Nelson's peerless name!

Henry Newbolt

As one would expect from the quality of his maritime works, Montague Dawson (1895-1973) lived a life intimately connected to the sea. The grandson of Henry Dawson, a marine painter in his own right, and the son of an engineer and yachtsman, a fascination with the nautical was clearly in his blood. His father’s financial misfortune as an imaginative but rather impractical engineer proved a stroke of luck for Montague, whose family had to move from comfortable (but landlocked) Chiswick to Southampton, where a young Dawson would spend hours watching the ships.

Though not classically trained in the fine arts, Dawson received an exemplary working education in commercial art from the age of 15, working in a studio in London. Although the outbreak of war in 1914 halted his growing fascination with Dutch marine masters that he saw in London’s museums, it led to him joining the Navy, where his talent as a draughtsman landed him in the (aptly named) Dazzle section as a painter for the service. Not only did his time in the navy inculcate an even closer understanding of all types of vessel, it also introduced him to the aged Victorian marine artist, Charles Napier Henry (1841-1917) who became a mentor. Looking at

Dawson’s Clipper paintings, one assumes that this bridge to the mid 19th century would prove invaluable.

As with most marine artists, Dawson clearly had a taste for the more romantic facets of the sea. While he returned to illustration in 1918, he was persuaded to join an expedition in search of treasure in the Caribbean in 1924! Although unsuccessful, the drawings he produced during this episode gave him the confidence to publish his works and become a professional artist.

DAWSON

"His natural talent for drawing and the lure of the open sea evolved into a powerful attraction"

From the outset he was highly respected, beginning to exhibit with the RA and becoming wealthy enough to buy a large art deco house on the coast by 1937 with his wife and daughter. During the Second World War he refused to leave the coast and worked again as a propagandist for the Royal Navy. With his reputation reaching its apogee in the post-war years and his work patronised by the Royal Family and Presidents Eisenhower and then Johnson, Dawson turned his attention to his favourite subject matter, Clippers. Dawson’s painting of these Victorian engineering marvels further established them as the supreme expression of maritime aesthetics. Capturing their kinetic energy and sleek silhouettes, Dawson, like generations before him, saw in them the combination of practical design and beauty that made them famous. His works form a corpus of maritime portraiture that is still highly valued to this day.

The American Clipper Asterion

Asterion was designed as a ‘medium’ clipper, with the owners clearly looking for a middle ground between speed, operational economy and safety (considering how many of the fast Clippers were lost at sea in this period). Her first voyage gives an indication of how profitable these ships were in the period 18401869: for the single voyage she was chartered at over a quarter of her building costs, and amazingly carried 1600 tonnes of cargo despite only weighing 1135 tonnes. Her 8-year career is illustrative of the great distances that these Clippers covered, working between Britain, the Eastern Seaboard, Peru and California.

Launched: 1854

Builder: David Snow of Boston

Length: 188 ft

Beam: 36 ft

In 1861 she was almost captured by the famous Confederate raider, CSS Alabama, narrowly escaping the warship. Asterion was badly wrecked on Baker’s Island in 1863, prompting a perilous and well reported rescue operation by another US Clipper, Herald of the Morning, with the loss of no crew.

Even in their heyday as commercial vessels, Tea Clippers were often seen by the Victorian public as far

more than merchant ships, works of beauty as well as functionality. The interest that they generate as subjects for maritime painters seems to suggest that little has changed on this front.

The White Barque

Under Full Sail

Dawson’s work depicts a late 19th or early 20th century barque running at away from the wind in the open sea. The barque was possibly the most enduring type of sailing ship, popular from the 18th century well into the period of iron and steel hulled vessels (of the type depicted here). It is often forgotten that sails were still widely used on metal ships well into the Industrial era, and Dawson’s work captures this juxtaposition of old and new, with clean sails matched by the red oxidation on the iron bow, particularly noticeable on a ship painted a rare (and perhaps impractical!) white.

Defined by its combination of square rigged and fore-and-aft rigged sails, the Barque struck a balance between the power of the former and the ease of operation of the latter, while also being able to sail much closer to the wind. Requiring a much smaller crew to operate than fully rigged ships, the barque became ubiquitous as a merchant vessel. Dawson illustrates the versatility of the vessel as it runs from the wind with a sailing array similar to that found on squarerigged ships. The barque could operate both as a manoeuvrable coastal vessel or, as Dawson has depicted it, a stable presence on an open ocean swell.

Smuggling Off The Needles

The sea around the Needles has long been considered one of the most dangerous areas for sailing o the South Coast. Extending for three miles o the end of the formation are the Shingles, a bank of pebbles just below the waterline upon which myriad ships have been wrecked. With smuggling operations heavily policed by the Royal Navy, many ships were forced to navigate perilous waters in order to increase their chances of success.

The type of chase seen in this image was not unusual in the Early Modern period. While

most smugglers would attempt to flee Crown

o cers, one incident in 1784 ‘The Battle of Mudeford’ actually saw the death of a Customs and Excise o cer in a gunnery duel, further evidencing the danger of the cat and mouse play in the channel. This threat of combat is implicit in Dawson’s work, as the ship being chased appears to be far larger than the luggers that smugglers favoured. The romanticising narrative around smuggling on the Southern Coast of Britain still grips the national imagination, a mood well captured in this painting.

The British Ambassador

mid-ocean under full sail

Built in 1869 amidst a boom in Clipper construction, Ambassador displayed the newfangled composite design that hybridised wood and iron construction. One of the final engineering developments of the Age of Sail, the vessel would be finished the very year that the Suez Canal would be finished, heralding the ascendence of steam powered vessels for the first time. Where most British clippers were constructed on the Clyde, Ambassador was unusually laid in London and one can still visit the shipyard, the Lavender Docks in Rotherhithe, which survive to this day.

After the Suez Canal rendered their sails obsolete, clippers would transition to the Australian wool trade in the 1870s, sailing the great Southern Ocean on voyages still too far for the nascent steam engine. The huge rollers and frequent storms frequently tested these ships to their very limit; in 1877 an enormous wave would sweep the ships' master and four crew overboard and they tried to hold onto the steering wheel. It is easy to forget that for most of their existence these ships were a far cry from the few becalmed museum vessels one can still see today.

Dawson strikes a di cult balance between conveying the intricate detail of the vessel while also grounding it in the emptiness of the open ocean. While most clipper imagery tends towards adverse weather and

rough seas, Dawson instead opts to capture another facet of long voyages that Ambassador made to Australia and South America. Through a combination of cream, brown and orange tones, the artist bathes the ship in the warm light of the southern hemisphere: a far cry from the cool, harsh tones more commonly used in Marine Painting.

After a 30-year career as a merchant vessel, Ambassador was beached in 1899 on the remote southern coast of Chile. The eerily beautiful sight of its composite hull is still visible on the shore, not far from the Straits of Magellan she had so often plied. While almost all traces of her wooden elements have long since disappeared, the remaining iron skeleton provides a striking survival of Victorian shipbuilding that the intrepid traveller can still see to this day.

Flying Spume, The Adelaide

One of the first ‘Composite’ ships, combining a wrought iron frame with wooden planking, Adelaide was still considered experimental upon her launch in 1864. Within 5 years the advantages of strength and speed made this style of construction commonplace, the Cutty Sark (1869) being another famous example of the type. While most clippers began their lives as commercial vessels before turning to transport after the opening of the Suez Canal, the City of Adelaide is one of the rare purpose-built passenger ships designed for long journeys taking emigrants to the Americas or Australia.

The combination of innovative engineering and novel commercial approach was characteristic of the ship’s designer, William Pile of Sunderland. The inventor and propagator of the composite design, his ships were in perpetual demand. At his death the Sunderland Times would argue:

‘His genius was displayed in the building of ships, wherein he was not excelled. As Watt was great as a builder of engines; and Stephenson was great as a builder of railways; so William Pile was great as a builder of ships’.

City of Adelaide would bring more immigrants to South Australia than any other vessel in the 19th-century, making the dangerous passage from Britain twice a year. To this day many Australian families can trace their descent from the ship’s passenger lists. City of Adelaide is thus widely seen as an important piece of

tangible heritage from Australia’s colonial period.

On account of this historical importance, it was decided in 2017 that her largely intact hull, slowly decaying on the Ayrshire coast, would be transported to Australia to become a museum ship. City of Adelaide is thus the world’s oldest surviving composite clipper, beating the Cutty Sark, whose design she helped influence, by 5 years. William Pile’s ship stands today as a convergent point for three important narratives: her groundbreaking design, her role in the birth of the Australian nation, and her unprecedented age.

Dawson’s work, painted long before City of Adelaide became a historical monument, conveys two central elements of her nautical career. Set amidst the flying spume of the perilous Southern Ocean, the di culty of the long voyages made by Adelaide is made evident to the viewer; the ship placed upon a matrix of white brushstrokes that embodies the violent seas. At the same time, the artist chooses to include another vessel in the background, a nod to the fact that speed and commercial races were integral parts of the Clipper experience. Coming in only a few hours earlier than competitors on a voyage around the world could establish a ship’s reputation for decades, leading to a significant increase in profitability. Therefore, while City of Adelaide today represents a nation’s heritage, Dawson rea rms the speed and danger that were ever present in her heyday.

Clearing Skies, The Sobraon

Built in Aberdeen in 1866, the largest composite ship ever constructed at almost a hundred meters in length, The Sobraon would spend the next quarter-century transporting wealthy passengers to Australia and returning with valuable bales of wool. The combination of iron and wood found in composite construction allowed for bigger vessels that were nonetheless lighter, and with significantly more hold space. The scale of the ship is evident from a photograph of sailors crowding its nearly twohundred-foot-high masts, which supported more than two acres of canvas at full sail.

Passage aboard Sobraon was widely considered to be the best way to travel to Australia throughout the 1880s and 1890s, helped in no small part by a record of reliability during a period when Clippers routinely floundered. Her size allowed for unheard of amenities such as a three-tonne ice box, a water condenser, and a small contingent of livestock which produced fresh milk and eggs.

The comparative luxury of the voyage aboard Sobraon was well known throughout Australia. The well-known watercolourist Harold John Graham even produced a series depicting the amateur comedies put on by the crew for the entertainment

of the passengers, an experience unimaginable for most travellers during the Age of Sail! The Australian state archives still retains a copy of the handwritten programme for a ‘Sailor’s Concert’, a fascinating memento from the early immigration period.

Dawson has captured the huge vessel breaching the large swells of the Southern Oceans, his low viewpoint creating a sense of upwards movement as the bow of the ship crests a wave. By employing a backdrop of clear light behind Sobraon, the artist is able to create a silhouette of intricate rigging while still conveying the dark clouds and surf that threaten to envelop the vessel.

Harold John Graham Watercolour (1881) and a surviving programme (1889) from The Sobraon.

OF MODEL SHIPS

Model ships occupy a unique place in the arts. Sitting between aesthetic object and engineering study, today’s miniatures stand at the head of a significant historical tradition in which they underwent a transition from craftsman’s tool in the design process to highly valued artwork. This tradition is worth exploring further.

of buildings despite the latter being as least as popular a subject as the former. Perhaps one could argue that the draw of model ships comes from the fact that they are one of the few miniature objects that could still conceivably function like their much larger counterparts (given very smooth water!).

Even other miniature works of engineering can be seen as incomparable. Williams, in his work on model shipmaking, points out that: ‘Unlike railway models, which will nor mally have been made after the prototypes have proved their practical value, and are, therefore, even at their best, merely reproductions of existing man-made machines

What distinguishes a model ship from other comparable media? The first answer seems to be how longstanding, and how unchanged, the practice is. The techniques and arrangements employed in contemporary model shipmaking are almost indistinguishable from those used in the planning of ships four centuries. While other disciplines, such as architectural models, may have a similar lineage, it is telling that for the most part we don’t buy wooden miniatures

and objects, [whereas] a large number of model ships and boats have been created before the full-size versions were constructed’.

Although contemporary models are made after pre-existing ships, the fact that they can trace their technical lineage back to when they were integral in the design process renders them unique. Hopefully anyone who feels that there is a competition between the two media and areas of interest is gratified by this fact!

Further indicative of the unique ‘engineering- modelas-artwork’ nature of the model ship is its often-serene presentation. This stands in distinct contrast to the fact that these ships were often damaged, dirty, and primarily designed for battle. While military facet is explored in painting, the model ship assumes a position of idealised design. The desire to engage with ‘Age of Sail’ vessels in terms of their design is not surprising. Although it is easy to assume that the modern aircraft carrier is the engineering successor to the wooden battleship it is often contended that they were actually more analogous to modern day spacecraft, at the very cutting edge of what engineering could achieve.

The image of the gifted, lone craftsman making these models is not confined to today’s practice. While expert shipbuilders employed teams to make the most prized examples, the vast majority of models were made by those connected with the sea. The ‘recreational’ tradition of modelling was started by sailors on long voyages. Working a tall ship consisted of short periods of intense activity separated by much longer spells of calm and boredom, and it was this environment that popularised ship model making as a hobby. Sailors were known to decorate, in William’s words, ‘every surface on which they could legally lay their hands. This manifested itself in painting the ship, ornamental ropework, and is even evident in the fact that body decoration, such as tattooing, became so ubiquitous ly associated withseamen. It is hard to think of any other tradition that emerged in such an adverse environment, particularly given how cramped conditions were on these ships.

Although now primarily associated with Britain, our islands had a relatively late start to the model ship

game. While there are Ancient Egyptian, Viking, and Medieval examples of models being used as votive o erings by sailors, there are few examples of this practice in the UK. However, after the Anglo-Span ish naval conflicts of the 16th century England saw a paradigm shift in its approach to the model, and from that point their number greatly increased in concert with Britain’s rise to naval dominance. Although the most important models are the purely practical ones, made for the Royal Navy, there was also a concur rent rise in models being made for patrons, and even appearing as toys for children, all before the same took place on the continent. Strangely, the only group that seemed to object to the rise in modelling were sailors and o cers themselves. A particularly illustrative example is a complaint by 6 young o cers at the Ports mouth Royal Academy in 1742. When given a model of the 1st-rate Victory to train with, they responded angrily that: ‘[she] is so small, her rigging is so slight, that we cannot learn anything from it, neither do we know anything of

rigging or the stowage of anchors or cables, and we are quite ignorant of everything that belongeth to sails’. With humorous indignation they instead asked for an old yacht to practice upon and the Navy thereafter began more practical seafaring education. Clearly the British had already become a little too attached to their models!

Williams, G. R., The World of Model Ships and Boats, (Chartwell, London, 1971), 14. Lavery, B., The Ship of the Line: A History in Ship Models, (Sea forth, Barnsley, 2014), 15.

Williams, G. R., The World of Model Ships and Boats, (Chartwell, London, 1971), 11.

Born in 1936 and brought up in Buckhurst Hill, Keith Snow served a five year apprenticeship as a cartographic draughtsman with Geographia Ltd. in Fleet Street. Despite the austere conditions prevailing then, he managed to buy a 12ft sailing dinghy which he kept at Hullbridge and sailed the Crouch estuary.

were followed by two years freelance draughting.

Keith then got married and moved to St. Ives (Hunts) where he spent the next thirteen years sailing a 20ft 'Dauntless' out of Woodbridge and cruising from the Solent to Norfolk.

It was during a visit to Cley, Norfolk that he saw in a gallery a painting of the local marshes and thinking that he “would give my eye teeth to be able to paint like that” ....so bought some watercolours and paper and started to dabble.

In 1973, when 'they' were threatening to develop Foulness and build a six lane motorway over his favourite anchorage at Paglesham, he was o ered a position with a manufacturer in Auckland and so he sold up and moved there, spending twenty years with that company.

Keith joined both the local sailing club and art group and after a few years started tutoring evening classes for painting at local colleges. Twenty years ago he gave up his day job and painted and tutored full time, with some success as he has now been able to give up evening classes.

Two years national service, serving at the School of Military Survey in Newbury and then Cyprus

Keith's natural talent allows him to paint a range of subjects, but with his draughting skill and knowledge of boats, it is his marine work which particularly excels.

SNOW

High

Flood Tide o the Nore continues Snow’s interest in the mixture between industrial modernity and traditional sailing vessels. The work depicts a threemasted iron hulled Barque on the London shipping lane. The Nore forms a well-known bank that separates the Thames from the North Sea between Essex and Kent, traditionally marking the limit of the London Port Authority and the open ocean. Considered extremely hazardous for ships, this area had one of the earliest lightship and buoy systems, and was probably one of the busiest areas of sea during London’s commercial heyday.

Flood Tide Off The Nore

An

Backwater

An Essex Backwater focuses on a much quieter and more intimate scene than is usual the subject for maritime painting. Following his interest in coastal rather than oceanic imagery, Snow captures the stillness

of the broads at low tide. The work evokes a sense of the still interval between fishing periods, with a small, single masted schooner at rest on the embankment. An emblematic image of an East Anglian fishing community.

JIM FEASEY

"Ship Model Builder Extraordinaire"

It was in November 1979, that I first saw the work of Jim Feasey at a small auctioneers in Plymouth, Cornwall. A finely detailed 1/24th scale waterline model of The Tea Clipper Ariel had caught my eye. This beautiful model was finished to such a high standard and sailing on a most natural looking sea that I couldn’t resist it.

I began correspondence with a Mr. Michael Newman of the auctioneers W.H.Lane and Son, who kindly e ected an introduction to his ‘well known model maker’ and it was there that a lifelong friendship began. Mr. Newman introduced Jim thus - 'I am very pleased to be able to put you in touch with Mr. Feasey, who is in my estimation one of the finest Modellers at present practising in the British Isles and yet one who is still able to produce superb models at very realistic figures.’

A commission of the Thames Barge ‘Kathleen’ was our first ‘project’. Jim was busy working

on a 1/10th scale model of the 10 Gun Cutter Entreprenante of Trafalgar and so I had to be patient. Jim’s attention to detail was extraordinary, and whilst he was working on the Entreprenante, he had secured a book by Edgar Marsh and a set of his plans on the building of the barge Kathleen. He was so confident in his craft that he knew to suggest that the model would look at home ‘moored in a muddy estuary with the tide out and sails furled. This would look good, but it is of course however he wishes.’ The model took Jim three months, and it is still one of my favourites in my collection.

Based in Bodmin in Cornwall for the first six years that I knew him, Jim and his wife lived a simple life. His wife and his son Chris enduring his obsession with the ships and the models that took most of his time. Jim detested the hustle and bustle of London and would conscript anyone he knew to deliver the completed models for him, neighbours, friends but more often than not it was his son Chris, who lived in West Ewell, who was engaged to deliver the models.

In October of 1985, the family moved to Halesworth in Su olk, and it didn’t take them long to settle in, although Jim confided they were missing their friends in Cornwall, they occupied themselves in restoring their new garden. Jim telling me that they found they went out far more than when they were in Cornwall.

Jim didn’t talk much of his early years during the war, but soon after his move to Su olk, he had his ‘old Bomber pilot from Melbourne Oz staying since May (until 19th July) so as you might gather, haven’t done any modellingbut lots of talking.' He was to take a trip with his wife a few years later at Christmas to visit his friend in Melbourne - he described it as going ‘backpacking in Oz’. In a lovely letter he wrote to me he said ‘I was in Melbourne at the time enduring temperatures of 30-40 - Christmas dining on patio (but it ain’t the same).’

On a business trip to Austria once, I posted Jim my latest letter, when it arrived the postmark flummoxed him - 'I must say I was rather startled when it arrived and I

saw it was from Austria. I sat looking at the envelope before opening it, and not knowing anyone out there I began to think that some Burgomeister had traced my crew to sue for dropping a load of incendiary canisters and HE.' (high explosives Ed.)

After the war, Jim went into the police force and was based in the London Docklands for many years before he retired to Cornwall. A fitting place for a man with such an interest in ships and marine life.

Jim and I continued our correspondence and friendship over the years and I continued to buy many more models from this humble, gentle genius. The majority of my collection of model ships have been created from the

hand of this skilled model builder. I have over sixteen models in my collection from him including Endeavour, Titania, Ariel, Entreprenante, Neufchatel, Shannon, Pickle, Captain and of course the beautiful Thames Barge Kathleen.

Jim had an ongoing conflict with himself over the infrequent times he submitted his models for exhibitions, mostly at the annual Model Engineering Exhibitions in London. Often deciding not to make the trip for any reason he could find, he removed himself from the competition before it began. On those occasions when he did pluck up the courage and confidence to make the trip to deliver the models, he was often left scathing of the judging due to his attention to detail and quest for perfection. Jim did garner several awards over the years for his models including two bronze medals and one silver medal but ultimately he was always his own most severe judge.

In late 1996 and early 1997 my letters to him didn’t get a response, and so I called his house and spoke with his son Chris who told me his father had passed away. A sudden abrupt, but mercifully quick end for this gentle, passionate man.

In my opinion, Jim was on a par with Donald McNarry, the renowned model builder and when I put their models side by side, you can see the work of two masters of their art. I have a lovely collection of models from my lifetime’s passion, however it is my long friendship with Jim Feasey that I cherish the most.

Anthony Fuller

Ronny Moortgat was born in Niel, Belgium in 1951 on the banks of the River Schelde. His fascination with the sea was engendered from a young age, sailing the tidal estuaries of the Netherlands and The Channel as a child. Moortgat’s family would also leave an enduring legacy on the artist, as he has observed:

“The reason to paint maritime subjects is probably to be found with my family roots. On my mother’s side there were quite a few river barge men and my father was involved in the shipping business”

As with so many of our marine painters, an obsession with the sea was not only inculcated in childhood, it was almost a birth right.

Although Moortgat’s parents would insist on his achieving a school diploma before beginning his career as a painter this clearly did little to dampen his artistic enthusiasm. Spending 6 years at art school where he engaged in the centuries-old Low Countries tradition of etching and printing alongside drawing and painting; his multifaceted talent is still evident today in his range of media from watercolours to bronzes. Trained as a technical draftsman, Ronny has since combined his own more impressionistic approach with the strictly classical. The ability to integrate the virtuosic detail of technical drawing alongside personal style is a hallmark of the best Marine Painters, conjoining the detail necessary to

RONNY MOORTGAT

Ronny's four large battlescenes on the following pages depict engagements with significant interest;

The series illustrates the explosion of small ship engagements in the period 1793-1815 as the Revolutionary and Napoleonic conflicts in Europe expanded to the scale of a proto-world war.

This was the real beginning of the Royal Navy as the unchallenged thassalocratic power. Throughout the Revolutionary Period (17931815) that Moortgat’s works focus on, the Royal Navy underwent a dramatic expansion which put significant strain on resources. From just 1793 to 1797 the Navy increased from 134 to 633 ships, and 45,000 men to 120,000. Moortgat’s depictions of naval battles are thus set against the context of an unprecedented growth of the world’s navies, as Britain’s competitors struggled to keep pace.

They are set during one of the largest naval expansions in history, requiring huge amounts of men and material, which also links to the backgrounds of mutiny in Camperdown and Chesapeake-Leopard.

The Chesapeake and Constellation are of significant interest in the US as they were two of the first six capital ships that began the US Navy.

capture elaborate rigging and period details and at the same time generating the evocative approach to texture and lighting needed to bring such intricacy to full life through expressive brushwork. Imbuing works with meticulous historical observation while also imparting the kinetic energy of sea and sail is a balancing act that only the best marine artists can hope to undertake, and it is proof of Ronny’s skill that he consistently rises to the challenge. Put in his own words: “Alongside the rather strict classical work, I do the more impressionist approach that involves loose brushstrokes. I try to create detail and atmosphere and strive to learn from other painters by looking very closely at their work and reading all about them. The process of learning never stops as borders are constantly redefined, always trying to do better but never satisfied!”

A particular signature of Moortgat’s work seems to be his approach to colour, often employing a far more saturated palate than his contemporaries. Through his energetic blues and greens, Ronny brings an unusual degree of brightness and luminosity to his works, which has made him a particularly impressive painter of dusk and nocturne scenes, often expressed in his skilful watercolours. When combined with the strong silhouettes characteristic of his ships he is able to generate a vivid plasticity able to draw the viewer into the work. As with figures like Dawson and Gardner, a preliminary grounding in technical skill has paid remarkable artistic dividends. Beyond his maritime scenes, Ronny also paints landscape and still life scenes, the latter of which evoke the style of the Flemish Old Masters and bear testimony to his tutelage under Willem Dolphyn. Ronny is a member of the Belgian Society of Maritime Artists (1995), has been selected as an Associate Member to the Royal Society of Marine

Artists (2004), and has featured in prestigious publications including the Dictionary of Sea Painters by E. Archibald (2000) and a volume on the Royal Society of Marine Artists (2005). As an artist he has become increasing decorated in recent years, winning the Worshipful Company of Shipwrights award in 2006 and being given the Award of Excellence by the Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut (the largest in the States) in 2015, 2016 and 2017. Ronny has completed commissions for numerous organisations and private companies, and his work is to be found in the National Maritime Museum of Antwerp, as well as in private collections in Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, Great Britain and the USA. He is particularly well respected in his native Belgium, with commissions for the City Council of Hoboken, the Belgian Navy, and the Port of Rotterdam. In his work for private organisations Moortgat has also been able to show his skill in depicting the contemporary industrial maritime landscape, yet another indication of his multifaceted talent.

The Battle Of Campberdown

The Battle Of Campberdown

Camperdown represented a decisive victory for the Admiral Adam Duncan and the Royal Navy over the forces of the Batavian Republic, the Revolutionary State established in the Netherlands as a ‘Sister-Republic’ to France. The Dutch fleet posed a significant threat to the British in the North Sea, particularly due to their alliance with the French. The battle represented the largest scale naval engagement of the Revolutionary Wars to that point, with sixteen British ships-of-the-line facing fifteen Dutch, alongside numerous smaller vessels. It has been argued that Camperdown could be considered the last time that a naval battle needed to be won by the Royal Navy, as the Dutch were intending on sailing with thirty thousand troops in order to invade Ireland. It is also likely the reason that Napoleon was unable to invade the mainland when he was the commander of the Army of the Channel in 1800-1802.

Although now much eclipsed by Nelson’s triumphs at Aboukir Bay and Trafalgar in the following decade, Camperdown was widely celebrated by the British public, and considered at that time a contender for the nation’s most significant naval victory. The battle prompted a significant boost to national morale, particularly given the fact that the fleet had su ered significant mutinies the year before. For his successful command Adam Duncan was made Viscount of Camperdown, and interestingly was awarded the largest pension ever o ered by the British Government.

The Battle Of Quiberon Bay

Ronny Moortgat

The Battle Of Quiberon Bay

The Battle of Quiberon Bay (1759) was the decisive naval engagement of the Seven Years War, a crushing victory by the Royal Navy over the French Fleet in their own coastal waters. As with so many important battles for the Royal Navy, the engagement was set against the backdrop of a possible invasion of the British Isles by a continental power. The British battle fleet had launched raids on Le Havre earlier in the year, and while they had managed to sink transport ships intended for the invasion, the main French forces still survived intact. With the Royal Navy now blockading St Nazaire, to both contain the French and strangle their commerce, a large battle was inevitable. In high winds, the Comte de Conflans tried to establish a French battle line, but in the face of tempestuous conditions, he decided to regroup amongst the reefs and shoals of Quiberon Bay, believing they o ered protection from the British, assuming they would not follow into unknown and dangerous waters. However, despite these adverse conditions, the British admiral, Lord Hawke, pursued at extremely high risk, and decisively outgunned and outmanoeuvred the French. With the victory, the enemy fleet was blockaded in the bay, and eventually dismantled by the French as they were unable to escape.

Moortgat emphasises the rough seas that defined the engagement. The British three-decker in the foreground (possibly the 100-gun Royal George) is shown with most of her gun ports closed due to the swell of the violent North Westerly wind. As the battle would show, having lower ports

open was often the leading cause of capsizes in these stormy engagements, with two French ships sinking after taking on water. Although the British were not immune to the conditions, losing a thirdrate to a reef, the rough seas gave them a decisive advantage. In a narrative common to the period, the British had the only sailors that had extensive knowledge of combat in rough seas, given how di cult it was to discharge cannons on a pitching ship. The sailors of the Royal Navy were routinely able to discharge two volleys faster than the enemy’s one (a fact lamented even by Napoleon when he planned his own invasion in 1803). In a period often demined by its symmetrical warfare and identical technology on all sides, this represents one of the few cases where an Early Modern nation held a significant military advantage. Even when rivals created navies to match the British fleet in size, as happened in 1805, the quality of British seamanship and gunnery inevitably prevailed.

Quiberon Bay was a hugely important battle, and heralded the start of a half-century when Britain clamped down on the waves and became the world’s maritime hegemon. It was also seen as the premier victory in Britain’s Annus Mirabilis of 1759. With Britain and Prussia facing every other major European power, the Royal Navy had to hold the seas while Frederick the Great won the continental land war. As the conflict raged in the Indian and American theatres, the war is often described as the first ‘World War’, and as such control of the seas was critical to the eventual Anglo-Prussian victory.

Destruction of the French Frigates

Moortgat captures the beginning of the action of 22 May 1812, as the British Ship of the Line Northumberland engaged and destroyed two French frigates, Ariane and Andromaque. During the later Napoleonic period, the Royal Navy had established so tight a blockade of France that few ships were ever able to venture into open water. Yet French vessels would still routinely try and evade British patrols with the hope of being able to prey on undefended merchant vessels in the Atlantic. Ariane and Andromaque were two such ships, returning from a voyage in which they had taken 36 merchantmen over the course of only four months. With the British alerted to their presence, the much larger warship Northumberland was sent to intercept them.

L'Arianne and L’Andromache by HMS Northumberland

As the French ships approached the Breton coast, they sighted the large sails of Northumberland on the horizon. Opting to use their speed to negate the superior firepower of the British vessel, the French captain decided to try passing through dangerous shallows, trusting a subordinate who knew the local waters well to navigate them to safety. However, as they were passing Northumberland the first exchange of fire killed the unfortunate navigator – resulting in Andromaque and then Ariane successively running aground in the now-unknown waters. It is this initial action which Moortgat captures in his work. After firing a few more broadsides to ensure she had incapacitated the French ships, Northumberland retreated to deeper waters to ensure the same fate. While smaller support vessels tried to save the frigates, fires onboard both ships meant that both ships would explode during the

night. The destruction of two frigates for minimal losses was considered a great success, and helped ensure that British shipping went unmolested.

After her celebrated action, Northumberland was perhaps best known for transporting Napoleon I to his exile on St Helena in 1815. After the Emperor’s flight from Waterloo his ship was quickly intercepted by Bellerophon in the channel, at which point he finally surrendered. While Bellerophon would normally have been a orded the honour of carrying this illustrious prisoner it was quickly decided that age presented too great of a risk, Napoleon was therefore handed over to Northumberland. There survives to this day a drawing by a crewmember, Denzil Ibbetson, of the Emperor aboard Northumberland as he left France for the final time.

The Battle Of The Nile

The Battle of the Nile, in which the Royal Navy decimated a French fleet o the Egyptian coast, would assure British control of the Mediterranean for the duration of the Napoleonic wars, catapulting the victorious admiral, Horatio Nelson, to national fame. In 1798, the rising star of the French military, Napoleon Bonaparte, embarked on an ambitious campaign to secure Egypt for the Republic. As his fleet made its way to Alexandria, it was closely pursued by Nelson, who had been chasing the French Fleet around the

to carry the day. While this confrontational plan of action would likely have resulted in victory, it was a bold plan concocted by Nelson’s subcommander, Thomas Foley, which sealed the destruction of the French fleet. Aboard his ship Goliath, Foley lead four further vessels between the enemy flank and the Egyptian shore, a movement which had been considered impossible by French commanders due to the presence of dangerous shallows; alluded to by the palm trees of the shoreline edging into view on the left of the painting. As Nelson’s vanguard broke the French centre, resulting in the famous explosion of their Flagship Orient, Foley surrounded and captured Guerrier and Conquerant in the fierce fighting that Moortgat depicts. The independent action of Foley, unplanned before the battle, was characteristic of Nelson’s ability to get the best out of his subcommanders.

Mediterranean for three months often missing them by a margin of hours. While Napoleon was able to successfully land his troops, on the 1st of August the Royal Navy was able to locate the French at Aboukir Bay o the Egyptian coast and immediately made to attack. While Nelson approached, the French ships opted to remain at anchor and form a defensive line, a detail captured by the chains holding Conquerant in place at the right of Moortgat’s painting.

Rather than attempting to capture the confusion of nearly forty ships meeting in battle, Moortgat has chosen to focus on a singular turning point within the engagement. With the French ships at defensive anchor, Nelson led his fleet directly into their main battle line, trusting superior manoeuvrability and seamanship

While Napoleon would succeed in taking Egypt for the Republic, British control of the seas would neutralise any strategic advantage he might have gained. Nelson would move his fleet to Naples, where he would famously meet his great love Emma Hamilton for the first time. He returned to Britain a hero.

The Battle Of The Nile

MC NARRY

“Ship models are useless things and their only virtue lies in the accuracy and realism with which they depict the prototype in such a way as to give lasting pleasure to the beholder” – Donald McNarry, 1975.

While model ship writer Michael Leek, who knew McNarry well, acknowledges that this statement was almost certainly made tongue-in-cheek, it does go some way to illustrating the obsessive privileging of veristic craftsmanship above all else that characterises McNarry’s work. Although extremely knowledgeable about maritime history, Donald McNarry lived for detail. This singular craftsmanship is crucial to the artist’s appeal. Today, model ships can be easily manufactured to extremely high degrees of accuracy by machine

An

scale model of the US brig 'Lexington' (1775)

An exceptional 16' 1'' scale Admiralty Navy board style model of the 17th century eight gun Royal Yacht HMY Charles (1675)

tools in more commercial settings, and it is within this more saturated market that the historical tradition of the virtuoso miniaturist is even more prized, a continuation of a century’s long tradition. Although McNarry was a relatively private individual, in 1960 he and his wife Iris (an accomplished ship modeller in her own right) appeared in a British Pathé news short on an exhibition of their miniatures, the footage of which still exists. Even at the age of 39 he is already described as perhaps the greatest model ship maker ever. The fact that he was featured on film, in his capacity as rather niche expert, is probably quite telling of just how exceptionally skilled he was! Even in this early period his range is evident, showing models from a 15th century Flemish Carrack to 19th century iron troopships. Personally, I feel that the fact McNarry did not focus on ‘prestige’ models (large 18th century ships-of-the-line) does him great credit,

giving attention to the most interesting rather than the most bombastic ships. The attention he gave to his craft, routinely spending over 500 hours on a model, was also matched by his laborious and exhaustive research. When creating a 18th century merchantman, an often-underrepresented type, McNarry put almost two years of research into the project in order to develop the most accurate model possible. Beyond all of this detail, McNarry is also lauded for being the most accurate painter of water for the bases of his models, establishing his all-round mastery of the form. With such skills at his disposal, he was able to create models of

miniscule size while retaining immense detail; his model of the yacht Bluebottle is faultless under a microscope despite being only 3/5th of an inch in length, easily held between thumb and forefinger.

As the presenter concludes:

“there lies the genius of McNarry, the ability to produce a miniature ship and not just another ship model”

CHAPELET

Roger Chapelet (1903-1995) was born in Versailles and studied art in Paris. Chapelet was one of the three great French maritime painters of the twentieth-century, alongside Marin-Marie Paul Emmanuel Durand Couppel de Saint-Front and Albert Brenet. He discovered his maritime passion boarding a ship named the Rollo in 1927, where his brother was a radio operator in the port of Marseilles. He set sail for the first time in 1929, beginning his career painting at sea, and made a series of paintings of the various ports he travelled to: Le Havre, Antwerp, and Rotterdam. Already noted for his skills in his thirties became the o cial peintre de la Marine for the French Navy in 1936, a position he held until his death in 1995. He sailed in every sea in the world including the coastal waters of Greenland and Newfoundland, areas he travelled to as a young man simply to paint their local fishermen. As a painter for the services he recorded as diverse conflicts as the Second World

War, the North Sea and North Atlantic Convoys, the French-Algerian War and the Indo-China War; from each he created a record that will ultimately prove to be of great historical value. His role as an o cial visual archivist, his time as a seaman and his global experiences greatly contributed to his nearly-unequalled knowledge of ships throughout his diverse oevre. His work is particularly highly regarded in France where he was made a knight of the Legion D’Honneur in 1960, and subsequently decorated as a Chevalier des Palmes Academique, Chancellor of Cap Horner and given the Order of Maritime Merit, and had a street named after him and his son (a famous organist) in his hometown.

Chapelet’s global focus is further evidenced in his work as a stamp designer. The artist created imagery for a variety of French territories in the last years of its empire. That these stamps represent the final iteration of French colonial imagery will be of great

interest to collectors, an encapsulation of the more regionalised nature of French central administration. Chapelet’s works create a distinct visual and historical identity for each of the sister republics during a

period of great transition. These stamps were very well received, and he was awarded the Grand Prix for design. That the Frenchman also went on to be the poster designer for Compagnie Mixte, Paquet, Générale Transatlantique and Fraissinet is testament to his multifaceted skillbase. His work can be found in museums on both sides of the Atlantic, and the quality of his work is perhaps best attested by the fact that in 1974 he became President of the Marine Academy in France.

A selection of Chapelet’s stamp designs -

Gabon 1965: series of four ‘Old Ships’, mixture of later 18th century frigate types, and early galleon based designs.

France 1971: ‘L’Antoinette’, a clipper variety from 1860s/1870s

France 1972: ‘Côte d’Émeraude’, more traditional wooden warship type.

France 1973: ‘France II’, larger clipper/ fast merchant marine late 19th century type.

France, 1975: ‘La Melpomene’, mid-18th century 6th rate.

Sir Lancelot The Thames

Roger Chapelet

Lancelot on The Thames

Sir Lancelot on The Thames

S

ir Lancelot is most notable for achieving what is widely considered to be the fastest ever China to London transit during the 1869 race season, beating her nearest competitor by a full two days despite unfavourable monsoon conditions. Although events such as the famous Great Tea Race of 1866 (in which Lancelot’s sister ship Ariel lost to Taeping by only 29 minutes) have often been seen as merely publicity stunts, successful Clippers were often able to command a significant premium on goods. Presenting a strong racing pedigree was clearly of great concern to the owners of Sir Lancelot, who poached Richard Robinson from Fiery Cross, another Clipper noted for its speed. Lancelot’s owner, John McCunn, would go on to state that the new captain ‘was the best man I ever had in any ship and knew he got the best racing results out of Sir Lancelot’.

Although the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 prompted a decline in the importance of Clippers, Sir Lancelot was transferred to the Mauritius-Bengal routes and continued to break speed records under the command of Murdo MacDonald. She gained the epithet ‘The Yacht of the Indian

Ocean’, an impressive title for what was ostensibly just a fast merchant vessel, indicative of the high aesthetic regard in which Clippers were held. In her final years she was sold to an Indian merchant (Visram Ibrahim) in 1886, and then transferred to Persia before being lost during a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal in 1895 having already survived four close shaves during Monsoons.

‘By the Old Pagoda Anchorage’, 1926, by Cicely

Illustrative of her fame that she appears in the poem

Fox Smith celebrating the greatest Clippers -

“Sir Lancelot of a hundred famous

fights with wind and wave”

WILIAM LIONEL WYLLIE

William Lionel Wyllie is regarded as one of Britain's premier marine artists of the later Victorian and early twentieth-century era. Highly proficient as a painter in both oil and watercolour, he is known for highly atmospheric etchings of vessels, big and small, in the many harbours and waterways around the British Isles and beyond.

Wyllie specialised in painting marine subjects in watercolour and oil and he was also an etcher and dry point artist of the finest quality. His watercolours and etchings display a deftness of touch and a rare ability to capture brilliantly the flickering of light upon moving water.

Wyllie was an enthusiastic student of the sea and a keen sailor, a passion reflected in the accuracy with which he depicted the various vessels in his work, be they long retired men-of-war from the age of Nelson, Thames barges, or the warships of Jellicoe's Grand Fleet. As a young man Wyllie spent some time living on the Thames in a barge that he converted into a floating studio and his mesmerising depictions of the Thames illustrate the busy waters at the peak of its mercantile grime and grandeur teeming with boats and enveloped in the atmospheric London smog.

The monochrome tones of the painting enhance the atmosphere of the encroaching smog that masks the north bank of the Thames and from which the majestic silhouette of St. Paul’s Cathedral rises above.

Wyllie was educated at the Royal Academy School of Art and exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy and Royal Institute throughout his life. In 1869 he won the Turin Medal for painting. He was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1889 and Royal Academician in 1909. In 1900, he was awarded the Silver Medal at the Academy’s Summer Exhibition.

His most notable commission came in 1930, the year before his death, for a 42 foot long panorama of the Battle of Trafalgar, where it still hangs in the Royal Naval Museum in Portsmouth. With typical thoroughness, Wyllie sought to make the painting as accurate as possible. Friends read through log books to identify the relative positions of the ships; the Navigation School was consulted to determine the correct position of the sun. Wyllie even took a cruise o Cape Trafalgar itself to study the colour of the sea and the sky. The painting took him nine months to complete, and was formally opened by King George V.

Wyllie wrote and illustrated many books on art and had his works illustrated in many publications. Wyllie’s paintings, watercolours and etchings can be found in numerous museums around the world, including the Tate, London and the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich which holds a vast collection of this great artists work.

William Lionel Wyllie was an enthusiastic student of the sea and a keen sailor, a passion reflected in the

accuracy with which he depicted the various vessels in his work, be they long retired men-of-war from the age of Nelson or the Thames barges as depicted in this masterful watercolour, A View Across the Thames.

Medium and atmosphere dovetail in magnificent fashion in this Wyllie watercolour of barges being unloaded at low tide on the South Bank. The work captures the now-lost feel of maritime industry in the capital as the shrouded silhouette of St Pauls oversees the boat maintenance at hand. Sublime and the mundane interact to great e ect, in Old London one would routinely be able to see great baroque and neoclassical monuments juxtaposed against the rigours of daily working life. This impression is furthered by the smoky receding perspective of the upper register, where the outlines of buildings jut out from the washed textures of the far bank, creating

layered depth to the work. The sense of fog and smoke is only furthered by the use of a nearly monochromatic palate of dark greys. Impressionistic in parts, the work also delves into finer points of architectural detail, giving strong sense of how London would have felt a century ago, with frenetic moments of smallscale action set against a monumental unchanging backdrop. It is worth considering the importance of the chosen perspective in the work, as the viewer is situated in the place of the longshoremen looking up at the City and across the river, rather than looking down on them from the embankments, serving to further the onlooker’s identification with the workers.

A

WHAT MAKES A GREAT MARINE ARTIST?

Each of the artists shown in our Marine catalogue are defined by their lifelong and inseparable attachment to the sea and the vessels that sail and have sailed it. While one would of course assume that an interest in the ocean would be present for any marine painter, these artists seem to see the waves as a vocation! Derek Gardner, Roger Chapelet, and Montague Dawson serve as paradigms for the craft, their biographies sharing key commonalities. Crucially, all three figures honed their craft across the centre of the 20th century. Against this contextual backdrop they bridge

a period in which it was still commonplace for young men to serve in navies (as all three did) and see ships cluttering ports and city rivers yet at the same time it was also an environment rich with a developing nostalgia for the Age of Sail. Evidently, joining the navy is also indicative of a sense of adventure that characterises these artists. From Dawson treasure hunting in the Caribbean, Gardner painting flamingos in Kenyan salt lakes or Chapelet living in North Africa during the war, the range of these artist’s lives seems to be matched by the range of vessels that captured their interests.

With a naval biography rather than a classical artistic training, these painters also demonstrate the equal importance of more technical and prosaic skills, with Gardner working as a civil engineer, and Chapelet and Dawson as commercial illustrators. They were thus each able to marry the impressionistic impulses of one who seeks to capture the sense of a vessel running in the wind with the intensely detailed observation needed to capture the complexity of a vessel. Theirs is a painting of experience rather than academicism.

Each of the artists fascination with ships as aesthetic objects seems to come from the common theme that these painters were also not naval careerists but served for shorter period during wartimes, with an interest in vessels inculcated from childhood (it is

unsurprising that almost all of these artists have a family connection to the sea). It seems that it is this duality, an interest from the outside which was then catalysed by direct naval experience inside the forces, that creates the best marine painters. ‘Paint what you know’ is clearly less advice than precondition in these circles! Yet at the same time, by focusing on Clippers or the warships from the age of sail, it is evident that the romance and excitement of the sea is an equally important draw. While every painter takes their own path, and it can often be reductive to reduce their ability to the product of some common formula, in this case it seems that living, and crucially loving, the ocean pays unfathomable aesthetic dividends.

William Stewart

G.M. GARDNER

Gardner is widely considered to be the leading British maritime painter of the 20th century. Entirely self-taught, he became a master of his art with an unmatched skill for conveying the colour, luminosity and atmosphere of the maritime setting.

Gardner’s own life and upbringing was closely linked to the sea: his father was the Chief Engineer of the Clyde Trust and the Port of Glasgow, and he himself joined the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve as a midshipman in 1934. Although not classically trained, Gardner won a drawing prize and trained as a civil engineer, both indicative of the technical accomplishment he would bring to his work.

During The Second World War, he served in the Royal Navy on armed trawlers and destroyers in the North Atlantic and in the Mediterranean Sea. A particular moment of note in his WWII Naval carreer was Gardner’s participation in the naval attack on Algiers against Vichy France as part of Operation Terminal. Gardner recounts his memory of the assault aboard HMS Broke, carrying a detachment of US Rangers, as follows:

'We charged the boom at 25 knots just as daylight was coming, expecting it to be mined, but there was no explosion. We broke the boom and landed our troops, but the French brought up mortars and guns and we came under heavy fire. I went ashore to deal with a blazing warehouse. As the ship was sitting target alongside the quay,

the only course was to retire. This we then did under intense gunfire, sustaining many hits as we cleared the harbour.'

Two days later Broke sank from the damage on its return to Gibraltar, although the crew was rescued by a passing destroyer. Having lost his hearing in one ear from the noise of the firefight, Gardner bore a mark of this experience for the rest of his life. Serving with distinction throughout the war, Gardner was mentioned in dispatches for distinguished service and left in 1948 with the rank of Commander.

Though Gardner held a lifelong interest in marine painting, evidenced by his watercolours of battleships when serving as a midshipman in the 1930s, his emergence as a highly sought-after maritime artist only came after his retirement from the Colonial Service and return to England in 1963. Before this point he had largely painted imagery of the Kenyan highlands while he worked there with his wife Mary, who he met at a dance in Mombasa. Consequently, having just lost the hearing in his other ear from an attack of Tick Typhus, and brought home by Kenyan independence, it was not clear that the most celebrated phase of his career was just about to begin.

Gardner had approached Gladwell & Company prior to his return from Kenya and Herbert Fuller immediately recognised his immense talent and a budding relationship began. It was thus that when Gardner settled in Dorset and began to restore an old cottage on the coast, his love for painting the ocean and the ships that sailed it re-emerged with stunning success. Lauded not only for his detailed historical observations but particularly his ability to depict the weather and water that frame and inform his subjects, Gardner’s works soon found favour with our clients. Quickly able to build a studio, Gardner was able to devote his days to paintings and his evenings to immersing himself in Naval History.

By 1988 the Royal Society of Marine Artists elected Gardner as their honorary vice-president for life, an accolade that stands testament to his position as the foremost maritime artist in the country. In 2005, as part of celebration of the bicentenary of the Battle of Trafalgar, an exhibition of his work featuring a painting of every ship in which Nelson served was presented in London, another indication of his national importance. Today his work is ubiquitous in texts on contemporary marine painting, and his paintings are featured in public collections including the pantheon of maritime culture, the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. That he achieved all of this despite only devoting his life to painting at the age of 60 should o er some indication of his peerless quality.

"You've got to get a Glory in the work you do, An Hallelujah chorus in the heart of you, Sing or paint a picture, dig or shovel coal, You've got to have a Glory or the job lacks soul."

Named for the famous mythological ship which would carry Jason and his companions on their search for the golden fleece, Argonaut was launched from Glasgow in 1876. After the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, the need for Clippers to quickly transit the Cape disappeared, and consequently Argonaut was one of the last of these ships to be launched.

By the 1870s many sailing vessels were increasingly made from iron rather than wood, and Gardner has captured the lines of rust and iron railings which defined ships made at the juncture between the Age of Sail and the Age of Steam.

With the tea route made redundant by the Suez Canal, Argonaut and Clippers of her type were instead employed on routes too far to be plied by steamships. Consequently, Argonaut was commissioned by the aptly named Golden Fleece line for transporting wool between Australia and Britain. It was on ships such as Argonaut that many early Australian immigrants would find passage, and as such they form an important part of that country’s identity.

Given their sailing routes across oceans and dangerous passages, many Clippers would see their careers end in an inevitable grounding. In the case of Argonaut her end was far more dramatic. Sailing with cargo from New Orleans to London in 1917 she collided with scuttling charges laid by a German submarine in the Irish Sea. With Germany having commenced unrestricted submarine warfare against all Atlantic shipping in January of that year, the sinking of Argonaut on the 23rd of March would be one of the final contributions to the US entering the war only a week later.

The Argonaut

Laid down and launched: 1876

Length: 254.4 ft

Beam: 38.6 ft

Depth: 23.2 ft

Net tonnage: 1488

Derek G.M. Gardner

British, (1914-2007)

The Argonaut Oil on Canvas Painted in 1965

61 x 91 cms / 24” x 36”

Sunrise: The Glory Of The

Channel

Glory of the Seas is notable for being Donald McKay’s last Clipper, and end of an era noted even by contemporaries, with its construction photographed (see second image). Of particular interest is the fact that he was her original owner, a testament to how successful McKay had become by the end of his career. One might assume the ship held some sentimental value to the great engineer.

Perhaps Glory of the Seas most famous run is the record time of 35 days that she set on the passage between San Francisco and Sydney in 1875. Although as a medium Clipper she was not McKay’s fastest vessel, she was hugely successful in terms of her longevity in a period where these types of ships routinely finished their

careers at the bottom of the sea, a consequence of their sacrificing stability for speed. Glory ran goods on the Pacific coast, between California and Alaska, until 1906 and was then converted into a barge until finally being scrapped in 1923. Her figurehead can still be found in the private collection of India House, the New York club.

It should be noted that the date of her construction and launch, 1869, is a watershed date for Clippers generally. With the opening of the Suez Canal in that year e ectively ending the British ‘Tea Races’, and the transition to steam in full swing, 1869 is widely considered the end of the age of the Clipper. Consequently, it seems particularly fitting that it was in this year that McKay decided to design his final model.

The Glory of the Seas

Sunrise: The Glory Of The

Seas in St. George's Channel

DONALD MC KAY

Superior Clipper Designer

“I am just a mechanic … but a mechanic with luck”

Donald McKay (1810-1880) was a primary figure in the nascent American shipbuilding industry in the middle years of the 19th century. As one of the best-known designers of Clippers in the States, and the maker of Glory of the Seas and Sovereign of the Seas, both depicted by Gardner, his career is worth outlining.

McKay was the paradigmatic 19th century engineer, hardworking and industrious. An autodidact helped by his wife, who he acknowledged as ‘teaching me algebra and trigonometry’, he was a driving force in Clipper design during their heyday, 18401870, when the term underwent a transition from being applied to any fast merchantmen to becoming a specific class of ship. Using his experience in the shipyards of New York in his youth, he moved to Boston in 1845 and innovated the sharper bow and flatter

hull that would become hallmarks of the Clipper type, while at the same time creating new steam-powered machinery to speed their construction. In a period where news on both sides of the Atlantic routinely

McKay became widely celebrated. Consequently, it is not surprising that both McKay Clippers depicted by Gardner are record breakers. McKay’s success was well recognised in his lifetime, when Great Republic was launched in 1853, by far the largest Clipper in the world at that time, Boston declared a public holiday and nearly 50,000 inhabitants attended the launch. Even to this day his legacy endures at ‘Clipper Lane’ in Boston, the site of his erstwhile shipyard, and a nearby school and park still bear his name.

McKay's Shipyard, East Boston. about 1855. Southworth and Hawes, American, 19th century. Photograph, daguerreotype. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston reported on fast Clippers, McKay’s designs often made headlines. First with the unprecedented 89-day transit of Flying Cloud on the New York to San Francisco route (a sailing record only broken on the same route in 1994) and then the victory of Sovereign of the Seas (one of Gardner’s subjects) over a steamship in an 1853 race,

Glory Of The Seas 1869 by J.W. Black

Sovereign Of The Seas

Sovereign

the Seas

Sovereign of the Seas can justifiably be considered among the best Clippers ever built. When constructed in 1852 she was the largest Clipper in the world and her design had consumed McKay for some time. Amazingly, despite her size, Sovereign achieved the fastest speed ever achieved by a commercial sailing ship, a record of 22 knots which she holds to this day; she also held the outright sailing speed record for over 100 years. Beyond her near-perfect design, Sovereign of the Seas was captained by Donald’s brother Laughlan, who thus had an unparalleled knowledge of the ship, which goes some way to explaining her tremendous speed. With such pace, Sovereign would also be the first ship to travel more than 400 miles in 24 hours, a rate that had been held as nearly impossible for previous generations. It is telling that of the only 6 other Clippers to achieve this feat, 5 of them were built by McKay.

Sovereign of the Seas was also widely known for a famous race she undertook in 1853, a widely reported contest that she took against the steamship SS Canada to determine the fastest vessel over a period of 5 days. Sovereign performed better than even McKay envisaged, averaging a speed 3 knots faster than the steamer over the entire 120-hour trip, a considerable gap that solidified the position of the Clipper for another two decades and of course made McKay’s designs even more highly valued. With her speed and commercial e ciency, Sovereign and ships like her ensured the continuing presence of sail on the ocean. Despite her untimely end in 1859, running aground in the Straight of Malacca (a fate which seemed to befall all the greatest ‘extreme’ Clippers), the legacy of her speed is assured.

Sovereign Of The Seas

Duke of Abercorn

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uilt by Charles Connell, who was trained by the equally famous designer Robert Steele, in 1869, The Duke of Abercorn is an archetypical British Clipper. Sailing the Chinese Tea Route before transitioning to the Australian passage, she represents a period when these vessels fought to retain their value in the face of the Suez Canal and the increasing preference for steam; that she remained lucrative for her career despite these impediments is testament to the enduring brilliance of the Clipper design. A single vessel of this size was often able to carry cargoes (of tea or Australian gold) worth up to £250,000 (£18 million today) far more than the value of the ships themselves. Abercorn herself largely worked in the Australian wool trade, and photographs still exist of her berthed in Adelaide in 1875.

Made in the same year as Cutty Sark, Abercorn would routinely travel the same lanes as her. A particularly interesting moment is recorded in the log of the Sark, when both ships were preparing to leave Shanghai in 1870, that points to the attitudes that fuelled the Clipper trade. [Lubbock, B., The Log of the Cutty Sark (Brown and Ferguson, 2008)] recounts: 'Captain Dalrymple of the Duke of Abercorn was evidently full of confidence that his ship could beat any other ship in Shanghai on the race home, and he proceeded to challenge every clipper which was going to load new teas. This sporting spirit led to a great deal of betting amongst the shipping fraternity, and final the crews of the Cutty Sark, Duke of Abercorn, Serica, Forward Ho, Argonaut, Ethiopian, and the John R. Worcester waged a month’s pay, to go to the ship which made the quickest passage from Shanghai to the

Although Cutty Sark eventually won the race, the event is a highly illustrative and illuminating example of the competitive impulses that surrounded the Clipper culture. It was precisely this drive to commercially outperform one another that so many records were set, as a notably fast ship often commanded the greatest charter fees.

Abercorn continued to ply the Australian routes into the 1880s and is notable for being one of the first vessels sailed by a young Charles Lightoller, the future second o cer of the Titanic and the most senior member of the crew to survive the disaster. As was the case with so many Clippers, she was lost at sea in 1892 on a voyage from Cardi to Callao, Peru.

JAMES BRERETON

American ClippersLightning and Red Jacket

Lightning is an exceptional example of an extreme Clipper. One of the largest Clippers ever conceived, with an especially noticeable concavity of 16 ft across the deck of the vessel as an experiment in speed, she was built by the famed Donald McKay of Boston. Unusually, Lightning was commissioned by the Black Ball Line primarily for passengers, and as such her interior was sumptuously decorated with tropical wood, marble, stained glasses and gilded leaf. Her size allowed luxurious space while also preventing too much rolling in the heavy seas on the passage to Australia. With any excesses unusual for Clippers, who were often stripped down for speed and cost-saving, Lighting proved di erent in almost every regard, even printing its own newspaper for the passengers, The Lightning Gazette.

Lightning is illustrative of McKay’s pride in his largest and most intensely designed ships. On the

occasion that her hollow bow was filled in by her captain in Liverpool, McKay furiously denounced the whole city, complaining of the ‘wood butchers of Liverpool’ even though he didn’t own the ship! The protective attitude on display here is yet another example of the fact that Clippers were often treated as far more than commercial vessels even by their contemporaries. Under the captain James ‘Bully’ Forbes the ship was extremely fast for its size, making New York to Liverpool in under 14 days, and managing 436 miles in 24 hours, although as his nickname suggests Forbes pushed his crew to the very limit and was probably rather unpopular. As with almost all extreme Clippers, Lightning ended her days on the sea floor when in 1869 she caught fire carrying wool and tallow o the Australian coast, an event that was miraculously captured on photograph. The shoal formed by her scuttled remains still retains her name to this day, Lightning Shoals.

American ClippersLightning and Red Jacket

Almost as large as Lightning, Red Jacket was built by George Thomas in Maine, and is notable for being the last ship to be built there before the Clipper industry fixed itself in Boston. Named after the famous Seneca chieftain who adorned her bow, she was designed by Samuel Hartt Pook, a rival of Donald McKay’s whose vessels often competed for records. This competitive design environment clearly had great e ect, as Red Jacket managed to set a record on her very first voyage, travelling from New York to Liverpool in the then unheard-of time of 13 days and 1 hour. In her later career in Australia she almost beat McKay’s ship, James Baines’, record transit from Liverpool to Melbourne with a 69 day run. The painting probably captures the ship during this period, as both Lightning and Red Jacket carried wealthy passengers to Australia at breakneck speeds.

Red Jacket, extreme Clipper

Ordered and Launched: 1853

Length: 260 ft

Beam: 44 ft

Draft: 26 ft

Tons Burthern: 2305 tons

Brereton’s image captures a sense of the humming tension of a Clipper at full pace, and the intense work of the crew needed to sustain this speed is well illustrated by the figure working the rigging on the bowsprit over the bow on the ship in the foreground. The work o ers a fitting comparison of two of the largest and fastest Clippers of the period, designed during their early 1850s heyday. The artist’s work is heavily indebted to Montague Dawson’s legacy; Brereton himself noted that when he first saw the great artists Clipper paintings in 1979 ‘as soon as I saw [it] I knew straight away that I wanted to paint like that’. The draw of the adventure and kinetic energy of these vessels is readily apparent in the work. Brereton has pointed out that as a child ‘living in Derbyshire as far away from the sea as you can get on this island meant I was always fascinated by it’; a very fascination is evident in this highly detailed work.

Lightning, extreme Clipper

Ordered: 1853

Built and Launched: 1854

Length: 277 ft

Beam: 44 ft

Draft: 23 ft

Tons Burthen: 3500 tons

GEORGE SHAW

George Shaw was born in Glasgow in 1929.

In 1947 Shaw abandoned a future in the merchant service when he earned a place at the Wimbledon College of Art, at that time a primary school for painters. Four years at the School provided a good grounding in academic painting from which Shaw launched career.

He was a qualified teacher of landscape and portrait painting and gave demonstrations for many societies. Many of his landscapes were painted under the pseudonym of James Shearer.

Shaw’s family held long connections to the sea. His grandfather was Captain of a ship that plied between Greenock and the China Seas and

which tragically wrecked o the West Coast of Ireland, drowning the Captain. Shaw’s uncle was Chief Engineer on the Cunard Liner, Compania, and there has always been a member of the family at sea.

His first love was the sea and sailing craft, and his attitude to marine painting was one of strict realism and accuracy. His knowledge of London’s River from the Nore to Richmond was unsurpassed, and many of his subjects portrayed the Lower reaches of the Thames during its busiest period, up to around 1950.

Unloading At Limehouse Reach

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haw’s work depicts the frenetic activity of the Limehouse docks in the late Victorian period, when the Thames was one of the busiest commercial waterways in the world. Situated below the Upper and Lower pool (see Keith Snow’s work) Limehouse became a centre of maritime industry, with a density of chandlers, ropemakers and shipwrights established there. The area was to become so associated with the sea that an etymological legend sprung up that Limehouse got its name from the limes given to sailors to ward of scurvy. Among the first of London’s docks to fully close, Limehouse is today a focus for urban renewal, although the memories of its commercial heyday still remain.

Limehouse Basin was constructed in 1820 as the link between the Thames and the Canal system, and consequently the area well known for the eclectic mix of ships, from river barges to canal boats to ocean going vessels. It was here that goods were most routinely transferred from ships to shallow river craft. Shaw’s image captures this eclecticism, with steamers, tugboats and sailing vessels competing for space in the churning waters. The painting gives some indication of the sensory assault of smoke, wind, spray and noise that would have permeated Limehouse for over a century. The range of vessels depicted also mirrors the fact that Limehouse was home to probably the most diverse population in the world during the 19th century. As the location where crews would routinely disembark and then stay on in Britain, the area was the locus for Britain’s earliest Chinese and African communities and the centre of sailor recruitment in the capital.

Gladwell & Patterson

Gladwells Rutland

James Brereton p 96-99

Roger Chapelet p 66-71

Montague Dawson p 4-19

Jim Feasey p 36-39

Derek Gardner p 76-87

Donald McNarry p 62-65 Ronny Moortgat p 40-61

George Shaw p 100-103

Keith Snow p 24-35

William Lionel Wyllie p 72-75

With sincere thanks to Anthony Fuller and William Stewart for their research and writing for this marine catalogue.