Ship's Figureheads
By Richard Hunter
Earlier this year, a model of a ship's figurehead was sold at Bonhams in London, after 220 years hidden away from public view, its true significance as an icon of Britain's naval heritage unrecognised. This small yet exquisitely carved limewood and gesso-covered model is the design for the full-length figurehead of HMS Queen Charlotte, launched on 15 April 1790 at the Royal Naval Dockyard in Chatham, Kent. She was at the time the second-largest vessel in the British fleet.
Such models are rare. A number of letters in the Admiralty archives suggest that as well as sketches of proposed figureheads, models were also submitted to the Board of the Admiralty for approval. One of the most important survivors is the 1765 model for the figurehead of HMS Victory, in the collection of the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich.
Standing just 36 cm high, and carved in the round, the model for the Queen Charlotte's figurehead is a tour de force of the woodcarver's art, although its maker's name is as yet unknown. What is beyond doubt is the remarkable skill the craftsman demonstrates in understanding such an intricate group. Two carvers in particular had the credentials to undertake such an important commission. The first was William Savage, who had been working in the yard at Chatham since 1765, having been brought in to assist Richard and Elizabeth Chichley with the carving of the figurehead for HMS Victory. (2) By 1784, two years after work on the Queen Charlotte had begun, the second possible candidate, George Williams, was also working in the yard; it is possible that the two men collaborated. (3)
During the great age of fighting sail, from the middle of the seventeenth century to the close of the eighteenth century, naval figureheads throughout the great European fleets developed an increasingly sophisticated iconography. Once purely decorative in function, figureheads, and to a lesser extent the whole stern area of a ship, became politicised. Once the decision had been made to commission a new vessel, consideration would have to be given to the naming of the vessel. Since the Queen Charlotte was a first-rate ship of the line a royal connection was almost de rigueur, and the ship was accordingly named after George III's consort. Charlotte was a popular queen, born in 1744 Sophia Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the eighth child of a minor German prince, Charles Louis Frederick of Mirow and his wife, Elizabeth Albertina of Saxe-Hildburghausen. By 1782 she had been married for twenty-one years, and was the mother of fifteen children, nine sons and six daughters.
It is fortunate that a number of contemporary images of the Queen Charlotte in various media have survived, illustrating in great detail her remarkable figurehead. These help us to understand the complicated process of the figurehead's design and making. The Royal Naval Dockyard at Chatham in Kent was chosen to build this important vessel, seventeen years after HMS Victory had been built and launched there, in 1765. Orders for this new vessel were received at the yard on 12 December 1782, and the keel was laid two-and-a-half years later, in June 1785.
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