The Brave Tars of the Victory, and the Remains of the Lamented Nelson (1805)

"The Brave Tars of the Victory, and the Remains of the Lamented Nelson". Rudolph Ackerman. London, England. December 9, 1805. Royal Museums Greenwich.

"Broadsides: Caricature and the Navy 1756-1815" notes of this print,

"The fierce loyalty that Nelson inspired among those who served under him was a recurring feature of his posthumous appearance in caricature. In [this print], the result of a fruitful collaboration between George Woodward and Thomas Rowlandson, two tars deal with the death of their hero in a typically bluff and honest manner. The crew of the Victory had insisted on bringing Nelson home themselves, rather than move his body to a faster frigate. Jack, on the right, leans protectively over Nelson's coffin as he reassures his comrade that he will watch over his precious cargo until it arrives safely in England whereupon, he predicts, 'his monument will be erected in the heart of every Briton.' Woodward and Rowlandson's print appeared just days after Nelson's battered flagship finally reached home. 

...By focusing on the no-nonsense actions of Nelson's men, sympathetic caricatures such as [this one] foreground the other icon around which patriotic fervor could coalesce: the ordinary British sailor."

The tar on the left wears black shoes with round white buckles, white stockings, and tan petticoat breeches. His blue jacket is worn open with the top button on his single breasted jacket buttoned back, showing a white waistcoat over a protruding belly. His full-sleeved white shirt is visible under his open cuffs. Around his neck he wears a black handkerchief with the knot tied under his chin. He clutches a red and yellow striped handkerchief in one hand, and holds a black round hat with a large blue rosette in the other. His brown hair is short and curly, white sideburns reaching down to his earlobes.

The tar guarding Nelson (in a nice trunk) on the right is wearing black shoes with round white buckles, white stockings, and blue trousers. His blue jacket is also worn open, with a full sleeved white shirt peeking out of his open cuffs. His neck cloth looks to be striped in two different colors of purple. His brown hair is short and curly, and the round hat sitting on top of the trunk has a blue ribbon with "Victory" around it and a sprig of green stuck in it, making me wonder if the lettered hat band is not representative of a standard practice, but something special done in memory of Nelson, like the tars in this print from 1806.

The Death of Admiral Lord Nelson (1805 caricature)

"The Death of Admiral Lord Nelson". James Gillray. London: 1805. Royal Museums Greenwich.

Today we return to caricatures with James Gillray's 1805 satire "The Death of Lord Nelson". The image shows the wounded Nelson on the deck of HMS Victory, with a winged figure in the background blowing a trumpet that spurts fire like a cannon and signaling immortality.

Nelson is supported by Lord Hardy, whom Gillray has drawn to resemble King George III, and by a grief-stricken personification of Brittania, who is recognizable in caricature as Emma Hamilton.

"Broadsides: Caricatures and the Navy 1756-1815" gives the following commentary on the print:

The hubbub around the dying figure may be exaggerated to the point of absurdity, but the sense of personal and national grief conveyed by Gillray's print is no less authentic. The real  target of the artist's satire, it seems, is not Nelson (who finds redemption in death), but in the unbridled and, at times, unseemly race to institutionalize the loss of national hero. An inscription beneath the image informs the viewer that the allegory is, in fact, a proposal for an official memorial for the City of London, intended "to commemorate the Glorious Death of the immortal Nelson." In the event, Gillray's overstated tribute proved prescient, as many such proposals came to light n the wake of Nelson's death and funeral.

 In the background of the print are a number of common British tars, who are of course the focus of interest of this blog.

Two loyal sailors gaze upon their fallen Admiral. The one kneeling wears black shoes with buckles painted yellow, horizontally blue and white striped stockings, light brown breeches tied at the knee, white petticoat trousers, a blue and white shirt vertically-striped in the body, a red and yellow patterned handkerchief worn very loose so that it rests over the jacket, and a blue jacket worn open with buttons also painted blue. The sailor is bare-headed and clean-shaven, and his brown hair is short and straight.

The standing sailor holds his black round hat in his hand, revealing its white lining. His brown hair is short and straight. He is not wearing a jacket, revealing a striped blue and white shirt and loosely-tied red and yellow patterned handkerchief tied over his light brown waistcoat, which is worn unbuttoned almost to his navel.  

In the background several more tars work a gun. One hauling on a tackle of the gun appears to have vertically-striped (or it could be the hatching of the engraver; it's hard to tell) blue and white stockings and petticoat trousers. The two on the right wear blue jackets and black round hats, while the man firing the gun wears petticoat trousers and a blue jacket. His head might be bare, or wearing a cap - it's hard to tell from so little information.

A final indistinct tar in the rigging wears what might be white breeches or petticoat trousers and stockings, with a blue jacket and black round hat.

The sailor's journal, 1805

"The Sailor's Journal". London: 1805. Lewis Walpole Library.

Today's image is from a broadside ballad. Like The Sailor and the Ghost (1805) it is also an engraving from Laurie and Whittle of London. The song is about a Royal Navy officer bidding farewell to his dear Nancy and his eventual return, a scene portrayed above the lyrics to the song. The final half-stanza goes:

At seven up channel how we bore,

While hopes and fears rush'd on my fancy,

At twelve I gaily jump'd on shore,

And to my throbbing heart press'd Nancy.

As the song concerns a naval officer and one is shown in the engraving it's safe to say that sailors in the boat are supposed to be Royal Navy sailors; that said, they don't look much different from other sailor portrayed in engravings. All four sailors wear round black hats. Two of the men in the background are wearing light-colored shirts and don't seem to have on jackets or waistcoats; one has a dark-colored handkerchief tied tightly around his neck.


The sailor in the bow holding a boathook has on light-colored broad trousers, a double-breasted jacket worn open, a double-breasted light-colored waistcoat, a light-colored handkerchief tied in a small knot around his neck, and short hair peeping out from under his hat.

The sailor and the ghost, 1805

Today's sailor comes from a broadside ballad published in 1805. It details the story of a sailor who gets two women with child, marries only one, and is at last revenged by his jilted lover's ghost, who followed him to the sea after hanging herself. The moral at the end of the ballad is this:
You that do to love belong
Now you have heard this moumful song
Be true to one lest ill betide
And don't delude poor woman kind

"The Sailor and the Ghost". London, 1805. Lewis Walpole Library.

This is the first time I've covered a broadside ballad, and it's an interesting change from my usual study of caricatures. While this etching is still not treated with the same amount of verisimilitude as a serious subject like a historic painting, the sailor is less exaggerated: in particular his hat is not drawn oversized and "squashy" like sailors in caricatures of the late 1790s-early 1800s are often drawn wearing, but more realistically with a straight-sided, medium crown with a flat top.

Jack has short, curly hair, clearly visible since his round hat has fallen off his head. The black round hat has a white lining and a straight-sided medium crown and a brim of medium size. He wears a dark-colored triple-breasted jacket that ends at his upper thigh, with a white single-breasted waistcoat and shirt underneath. His black neck handkerchief is loosely-knotted around his neck, with the knot falling around his lower breastbone. His white trousers are tight at the ankle and looser in the thigh. On his feet he wears pointed-toe black buckled shoes and white stockings.

JMW Turner's Sketches of Sailors and Marines: 1805

JMW Turner; The ‘Victory’: Starboard Side
© Tate Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported),
The original can be viewed at the Tate by clicking here.
1805

Continuing my three-part series on JMW Turner's paintings of the Battle of Trafalgar, today we look at some of Turner's sketches. In 1805 Turner made a special trip to sketch the Victory as she entered the Medway, and subsequently made a large number of detailed studies and watercolor studies onboard the ship, as well as studies of officers, sailors, and marines of Victory and Temeraire. These sketches, now entitled the "Nelson sketchbook" (and available to view online at The Tate), subsequently became the basis for his 1806 painting of The Battle of Trafalgar, which I looked at last week. These sketches from life let us see how Turner interpreted what he was seeing, without the intervening artifice of his studio.



JMW Turner; Sailors and Marines
© Tate Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported),
The original can be viewed at the Tate by clicking here.
1805

These men are identified by the catalog record as two sailors on the left and three marines on the right. Taking the catalog at its word, the two men identified as sailors have long hair tied back into thick queues that end mid-back.

The catalog identifies them as wearing striped waistcoats, though they may also be wearing striped shirts or the machine-knit over-garment called a Guernsey frock. The stripes on the right arm of the top left sailor may be showing the pleating of his sleeve. The sailor in the middle of the drawing is identified as a marine, but dresses almost identically to the sailors in a round hat, waistcoat, and loose trousers.

JMW Turner; Marines, a Seaman and a Separate Sketch of a Man’s Face
© Tate Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported),
The original can be viewed at the Tate by clicking here.
1805

The men in this painting are more clearly marines. The man who is clearly a sailor has a long, thick queue that falls to the small of his back and a round hat with a broad, slightly conical crown and broad brim - perhaps a straw hat. 

After looking at these sketches it's clear that the sailors, their queues, and their hats look remarkably similar to the sailors that appear in Turner's final painting:

Detail from JMW Turner's The Battle of Trafalgar... 
© Tate Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported), 
The original can be at the Tate viewed by clicking here.

An English sailor at a French eating house, 1805

 

An English sailor at a French eating house.
[London] : Pubd. May 30th, 1805 by S.W. Fores, No. 50 Piccadilly.
Lewis Walpole Library.

Today's caricature is by Samuel William Fores, an English illustrator who specialized in caricature. Our English tar is in a situation ripe for humor, as his hearty English appetite struggles with French cuisine. He hands his plate of "shoes" (petites choises, or little things) back to his waiter as the other powdered, ruffled, and curled French diners look on.


He wears a large, squashy round hat with a blue ribbon and large rosette, with brown, short hair curling out from under it. His black handkerchief is loosely-tied around his neck and hangs down to his belly. He sports a red waistcoat with red cloth buttons and  a blue jacket with blue cloth buttons. His cuffs are worn unbuttoned, showing his white shirt below. His white trousers are loosely-cut in the leg and a white cloth tie is visible at the back in the waistband. He wears white socks and black pumps with white metal oval buckles on his feet, and a stick lies on the floor next to him.

A Sailor’s Will, 1805

A sailor's will
[London] : Pubd. by R. Ackermann, No. 101 Strand, May 25, 1805.
Lewis Walpole Library.

In this caricature an elderly sailor named Jack Junks dictates his will. As is usual in cartoons he speaks in phrases laden with nautical jargon, and this particular sailor references his missing limb: "My wooden leg to Sam Bowsprit, as the way he goes on in every engagement he is likely soon to want it."
He wears a soft red tube cap on his head with the back turned back to show a white lining. A yellow handkerchief is tucked into his blue jacket, which has four unbuttoned buttons on the cuff. Underneath the jacket is a hint of a white waistcoat and white shirt. A black-painted peg leg peeps out below loose white petticoat breeches. A long stemmed clay pipe rests in his hand.