Heaving the Lead, 1807

"Heaving the Lead". London: 1807. British Museum.

My third image from John Augustus's Atkinson's print series "A picturesque representation of the costumes of Great Britain"is one many of you might be familiar with: "Heaving the Lead". This 1807 print shows a sailor standing in the chains, using a lead line to measure the depth of the water.

The simple depiction of a sailor performing a mundane, omnipresent part of shipboard life have made this image a popular one for reuse, and it has been reproduced in numerous books covering the time period from the 18th century throughout the late 19th. Its clear composition also makes it a popular candidate for being copied by different engravers for books throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries - for example, this plate in the 1913 book "Ships and Ways of other Days".

Colored versions of this image are the most popularly-used for reproduction, so for my close analysis of  this image I'm using this copy in the collection of the British Library. The colored version also makes it clearer to see the two sailors working inboard.

"Heaving the Lead". London: 1807. British Library. 

The sailor heaving the lead wears black shoes with square white buckles. His white trousers, cut tight around the knee, are long and come down to the heels of his shoes, with a broad fall. He wears a double-breasted blue jacket worn shut, with small yellow buttons. His mariner's cuffs have three buttons, and one on his left wrist is worn undone. His neck cloth is red with white spots, tied up close to his neck with the ends hanging out. From underneath his blue jacket a checked shirt with a narrow cuff can be seen at his wrists.

On his head he wears a straw hat - far less commonly portrayed by artists than black round hats. A pipe is stuck into the band. The hat has a slightly-rounded top and a tightly-curved brim. It is of medium height, neither a low like a modern "Amish" style hat nor as tall as a "top" hat. Glimpsed under the hat is a bit of short, curly brown hair

In the background one sailor wears white trousers cut full in the lower leg and tight around the knee, with a checked shirt, a neck cloth of indiscriminate color, and a black round hat,

The other sailor wears white trousers, a blue jacket, and a black hat.

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.

The Battle of Trafalgar, JMW Turner, 1806

JMW Turner;
The Battle of Trafalgar, as Seen from the Mizen Starboard Shrouds of the Victory;
© Tate Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported),
The original can be at the Tate viewed by clicking here.

Today Napoleonic Tars celebrates the 211th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar with its first foray into the medium of oil on canvas: J.M.W. Turner's "The Battle of Trafalgar, as Seen from the Mizen Starboard Shrouds of the Victory". This painting shows the moment of Nelson's fall, the officers and men who rushed to support him, the wounded Lieutenant Pasco being carried from the deck, and the sniper in the French top firing.

The battle - and specific subjects such as the death of Lord Nelson - was a frequent subject of artists in the 19th century, but Turner's 1806 work is one of the earlier large-scale paintings and a good place to begin looking at how artists portrayed the clothing English sailors wore in the battle.

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) was a prolific English Romantic landscape painter who is also well known for his nautical scenes such as "The Fighting Temeraire" and "The Slave Ship". Turned painted the Battle of Trafalgar twice, first in 1806 and again in 1824. Both paintings depart from the historical events; the 1806 painting simultaneously combines the flash of the sniper's muzzle in the French top with Nelson having already turned and fallen. Despite this inaccuracy, the Tate's caption of the 1806 painting notes,

Turner made close observation of the ships shown here, but the painting of the battle in which Admiral Nelson died is not simply detailed reportage. Sails and cannon smoke arrest the eye, creating a claustrophobic backdrop, while the action appears to thrust outwards. The viewer is confronted by both the chaos of battle and the intimate tragedy of Nelson’s final moments. A contemporary reviewer termed this a ‘British epic picture...the first picture of the kind that has ever...been exhibited’.

The Tate's catalogue entry also quotes The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner" (Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll. New Haven and London: 1984)

Turner made a special trip to sketch the Victory as she entered the Medway and subsequently made a large number of detailed studies on board the ship in the ‘Nelson’ sketchbook (LXXXIX). There are also two larger studies of the deck of the Victory in the British Museum (CXX-c, and the Vaughan Bequest CXXI-S, repr. exh. cat. R.A. 1974, p. 60 no. 96).  Farington recorded on 3 June 1806 that ‘Turner's I went to and saw His picture of the Battle of Trafalgar. It appeared to me to be a very crude, unfinished performance, the figures miserably bad.’   

Perhaps because he had been so keen to show the picture as soon as possible after the event Turner seems to have felt the need to work on it further before exhibiting it again in 1808. According to the writer, probably John Landseer, of a long review in the Review of Publications of Art for 1808, ‘The picture appears more powerful both in respect of chiaroscuro and colour than when we formerly saw it in Mr. Turner's gallery, and has evidently been since revised and very much improved by the author’. Describing the picture as ‘a British epic picture’ the writer called it ‘the first picture of the kind that has ever, to our knowledge, been exhibited’. ‘Mr. Turner ... has detailed the death of his hero, while he has suggested the whole of a great naval victory, which we believe has never before been successfully accomplished, if it has been before attempted, in a single picture.’ 

Whatever the painting may have looked like originally, its 1808 rework leaves it a striking scene that captures the feel of a critical moment in the battle. Turner's treatment of the moment stands in contrast to the other more intimate historic paintings of fallen heroes that he would have been familiar with, such as West's The Death of General Wolfe (1770) and Copley's The Death of Major Pierson (1783), and in even starker contrast to West's 1806 painting of the death of Lord Nelson and Devis's 1807 treatment of the same subject. All these paintings place the death of their hero - Nelson or otherwise - at the center of the action, whereas Turner's portrayal of the death of Lord Nelson is almost more in line with Bruegel's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus: an important moment lost in a larger world.

The ongoing battle consumes much of the frame of the painting, as the visual confusion of smoke, distance, and the towering spars and masts of multiple ships obscures Nelson's fall - so much that the painting was criticized by a contemporary for being about mere "shipping" instead of the "MURDER" of a national hero.

The scale of Turner's painting makes it difficult to distinguish the figures on Victory's deck, and Turner’s particular arrangement of the figures on deck is an imaginary reconstruction. Fortunately for us his exhibit key to the painting survives.

JMW Turner; Key to
'The Battle of Trafalgar, as Seen from the Mizen Starboard Shrouds of the Victory';
© Tate Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported),
The original can be viewed at the Tate by clicking here.

Two of the men are identified as sailors, namely "1. ‘Marshall’ [John Marshall, Able Seaman or William Marshall, Ordinary Seaman. Poop deck, kneeling to left of the flag in left foreground]" and "3. ‘Marshall Signals Man’ [see 1 above, or another John, Able Seaman. Poop deck, holding flag rope]." Turner's quick sketch also gives us an artist's quick impression of the essence of a sailor, which comes as no surprise: blue jackets and round hats.

Detail from JMW Turner's Key to 
'The Battle of Trafalgar, as Seen from the Mizen Starboard Shrouds of the Victory'; 
© Tate Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported),
The original can be viewed at the Tate by clicking here.

Detail from JMW Turner's Key to 
'The Battle of Trafalgar, as Seen from the Mizen Starboard Shrouds of the Victory'; 
© Tate Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported),
The original can be viewed at the Tate by clicking here.

David Blayney Brown, ‘Key to ‘The Battle of Trafalgar, as Seen from the Mizen Starboard Shrouds of the Victory’ 1806 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 2006, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-key-to-the-battle-of-trafalgar-as-seen-from-the-mizen-r1139293, accessed 20 October 2016.

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.

Despite its scale the finished painting shows some fascinating glimpses of the sailors on Victory's deck. In this detail a sailor on the left with his back to the viewer wears a straw hat with a dark ribbon around the base of the crown, a long, thick queue that falls to his shoulder blades, and a checked shirt. Helping him is another man, bare-headed with shirt hair, and also in a checked shirt. A bare-headed kneeling man with short hair identified in Turner's key as an able seaman wears a blue jacket and trousers with black shoes. A man with his hand on a crate wears a straw hat and black jacket with a lighter-colored garment beneath. Other figures in the background that may be sailors wear queues, shirts without waistcoats, and blue jackets.

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.

In this detail a bareheaded sailor on the right bends over; he also wears a checked shirt. A small kneeling figure by the mast with his back to the viewer may be a sailor; he wears a round hat with a queue.

In 1805 Turner filled a sketchbook with drawings from life of Victory and Temeraire, along with studies of officers, sailors, and marines; these drawings became the basis for his painting. Stay tuned for Monday, when I'll be looking at Turner's sketches of sailors from Victory. Also stay tuned for next Friday, when I'll compare and contrast Turner's 1806 painting to his 1824 treatment of the Battle of Trafalgar.

Sweet Poll of Plymouth, 1790 (British Tars)

Today's post is shared with permission from British Tars: 1740-1790.

"Sweet Poll of Plymouth," Thomas Macklin,
George Shepheard, Henry William Bunbury.
1790, National Maritime Museum.

In his post the author of British Tars writes:

Sweet Poll is a wicked looking prostitute drawing the attention of two tarpawlins and a creepy looking marine. The colorist of this print has done a fairly good job with the shading and careful application of color, except on the marine whose cartridge box blends into his small clothes, and cuffs fail to match the lapels.


This print is at the very tail end of [my] period of examination, and so the sailors look markedly different from those of earlier decades. Notably, both wear straw hats. I know of only one other depiction of sailors from our period of study that clearly and definitely shows a straw hat, and even that source I had to question. This is the first positive and definitive depiction of straw hats being worn by sailors in my period of study, and it comes at the very last year of that period.

Our first jack wears a wide brimmed straw hat, and has his hair bound in a queue (another change from previous decades in which short, bob-style hair was the most common). A blue jacket ending just below the waist and with folded back cuffs rests over a double breasted white jacket with cloth covered buttons. His trousers are white and end at the ankle, showing off pointed toe shoes with rectangular buckles.

His mate wears a straw hat with a shorter brim, and short hair. It appears his hair is without a queue, but not definitely so. A short lack neckerchief hangs over his waistcoat with its horizontal red stripes and cloth covered buttons. The blue jacket is single breasted with cloth covered buttons and an odd folded back cuff that also appears to be a double buttoned mariner's cuff. His trousers are slightly longer than his mates, but still show the same shoes and buckles.