intheboatshed.net

Storm at Mazatlan, Mexico, painted by Admiral Sir Edward Gennys Fanshawe, 1851. As usual, click on the images for a closer look – but expect this one to send a shiver up your spine!

Two male figures, one with a large cocked hat and a quizzing glass painted by Gabriel Bray; Ovolu [Ovolau], Feejee Islands painted by Admiral Sir Edward Gennys Fanshawe 1849

A grant from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation has allowed the National Maritime Museum to make part of its collection of 70,000 prints and drawings available online for the first time.

The newly digitised drawings are mainly by Royal Navy officers in the 18th and 19th centuries, and give a glimpse of tropical islands, exotic cities and indigenous peoples at a time when the ability to draw a landscape was not just a pastime but also a means of intelligence gathering.

Highlights from material recently added to the NMM’s online collection include over 100 working sketches by John Christian Schetky (1778-1874), an album of drawings by Gabriel Bray recording his voyage as second lieutenant of HMS Pallas to West Africa in 1775, and over 100 watercolours from albums by Admiral Sir Edward Gennys Fanshawe (1814-1906), covering his service in the Pacific from 1849-52, in the Baltic during the Crimean War, and in the Mediterranean.

Schetky and Bray’s works are very rare drawings of everyday shipboard life in the age of Cook and Nelson as well as some unique depictions of street-life ashore, while the much less well known Fanshawe was an amateur artist who recorded his varied and distinguished career with a skilled hand in highly finished watercolours.

The journeys Fanshawe depicts include an investigative diplomatic voyage during which he visited Pitcairn, where he met the last survivor of the Bounty mutineers, Susan Young, and heard first hand the account of how she killed the last Tahitian crew member with an axe during the island’s conflict; Fiji, where he drew what are possibly the earliest portraits of Seru Thakombau, founder of the modern state of Fiji; and Samoa, where his drawings of women show the enduring influence of English fashions on their Sunday-best costume.

The prints, along with commentary, can be accessed through the relevant pages of the museum’s website.

Pipkin, Curlew and Aileen

The pontoon at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall is busy again, now that summer is here: after a winter in the museum workshop Curlew, Aileen and Pipkin are all in the water. All three can be seen sailing up and down the river Fal throughout the summer.

Curlew is the oldest boat returning to the pontoon. A Falmouth quay punt that has travelled the world as a yacht, her career is one of the most varied, as it ranges from fishing boat to leisure cruiser to race winner.

Aileen is the very first St Mawes One Design. She was designed by Frank Peters after he was defeated in races off St Mawes, and was built for speed. She won three Falmouth Town Regatta Class races.

Pipkin is based on the design of the Cape Cod catboats and is used by the volunteers to hone their sailing skills.

On the subject of the NMMC, I’ve been asked to ask a favour of intheboatshed.net readers. It seems that the Our lighthouses: life on the rocks exhibition has made it to the semi-finals in the Best heritage project category of The National Lottery Awards, and needs your votes to make it through to the final.

Just 10 Lottery-funded projects are in contention. Voting is now open now and ends at midday on Friday 18 June.

To vote call 0844 686 7951 (calls cost 5p from a BT landline) or log on to www.lotterygoodcauses.org.uk/awards (which is free).

Dodo – click on the thumbnails for larger photos

Currently on show at the National Maritime Museum, Dodo was built and designed by 19-year old William Bergius and his younger brother Walter in Glasgow, in 1896.

Fitted with a removable keel of 50kg, she was the first of a series of boats by that name belonging to the Bergius’s, and seems to have been built with camp-cruising in mind. In 1897, a very confident young William wrote the the editor of The Yachtsman in the following terms:

‘Sir – I have read with great interest the letters regarding “Multum in Parvo” cruisers, and cannot help thinking that most of your correspondents want far too big a boat. Last year my brother and I built a boat in which, despite the small size, we can easily sleep three.’

Dodo is quite a big boat in a small length: she’s 14ft 6in in length, 5ft 4in in beam and a draft of 2ft 4in with her keel attached, and with a sail area of no less than 150sqft in a low-profile gaff-rigged mainsail and roller-mounted jib; despite her fairly hard bilges amidships (they’re less hard towards the stern) and small keel she will have been an energetic performer. William Bergius deserves our admiration for creating such a useful little boat.

I don’t think anyone would build a small keelboat like this for open-boat cruising now, but looking at Dodo, I kept thinking I’d seen something a little like her more recently, and now I think I’ve worked out what it was. Take a peek at John  Welsford’s Pilgrim drawings, and see what you think – of course much has changed, but some things – including the rig, generous freeboard and use of a sensible half-decked arrangement decks – are not so very different. Of course, if I wanted a boat to go cruising in myself, I’d take the modern conveniences and comforts of John’s boat every time.

Finally just to show the world what fabulous buildings the museum occupies, I’ve added two more shots for readers’ entertainment.

The Royal Observatory from the NMM’s colonnades; the NMM buildings, the Palladian-style Queen’s House and the Old Royal Naval College with the River Thames and the Isle of Dogs beyond