Ship Decoration, 1630–1780

Andrew Peters

• Publisher: Seaforth Publishing
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781848323322
• Topic: Tecnologia e ingegneria
• Subtopic: Trasporti marittimi

This book is a detailed comparative study of the decorative work figurehead, topside ornamentation and stern gallery design carried by the ships of the major maritime states of Europe in the zenith of the sailing era. It covers both warships and the most prestigious merchant ships, the East Indiamen of the great chartered companies. The work began life in the year 2000 when the author was commissioned to carry out research for an ambitious project to build a full-size replica of a Swedish East Indiaman, which produced a corpus of information whose relevance stretched way beyond the immediate requirements of accurately decorating the replica.In tracking the artistic influences on European ship decoration, it became clear that this was essentially the story of the baroque style, its dissemination from France, and its gradual transformation into distinct national variations in Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden. It is an inherently visual subject and the book illustrates developments with numerous photographs of contemporary ship models, paintings and plans, as well as the author's own interpretive illustrations of details.As the first major work on the topic for nearly a century, it will be of obvious appeal to ship modellers and historians, but with comparative examples drawn from architecture and sculpture, it also makes a broader contribution to the history of the applied arts.

PART I

A Brief History of the East India Companies

Consider for a moment the colossal impact that international trade has made in every aspect of life: how the simple exchange of material goods can open the hearts and minds of one society to the ideas, culture and artistic achievements of another. Art and trade have therefore always been inextricably linked.

Since the earliest of times man has decorated even the most utilitarian of objects. The ability to express and therefore share the emotional uplift that such expressions of beauty and harmony bring would seem to be a basic need, and since every civilisation has endeavoured to formulate these uniting principles, this need is universal. When a society struggles to maintain the basic necessities of food and shelter, the mind has little encouragement or energy to pursue the advancement of higher ideals, but fair trade creates the wealth to free society from such bondage.

The spare time enabled by such wealth can of course be filled in a variety of ways, not all of which hold the benefit of mankind as its guiding principle, with the greed of one inevitably leading to the deprivation of another. The ancient trade route known as the Silk Road, extending from China out into central Asia initially existed to aid military expansion, but by the first century BC it had become an established highway of commerce. Cities of incredible wealth sprang from harsh desert landscapes along a road that linked the peoples and traditions of the East with those of Europe, allowing not only the movement of goods but the exchange of cultures and knowledge. Eventually the societies that rose to create these amazing places would dwindle and die as sea routes replaced them, leaving the cities to crumble back into sand.

The Silk Road

The Tang dynasty, which ruled China from 618 AD, established internal stability and an economic climate in which the road reached its golden age, by which time silk accounted for 30 per cent of the merchants’ goods. Silk reached Rome as early as 1 AD, becoming so popular that it was literally worth its weight in gold. The year 632 in the Christian calendar marked the death of the prophet Mohammed and the rapid expansion of Islam, which by 712 AD stretched from parts of India and Afghanistan in the east to North Africa and Spain in the west. Traditional trade routes between the Christian and Muslim worlds were then disrupted, to the detriment of western European economies.

It is interesting to consider at this point what was happening in Scandinavia, the eighth century seeing a massive expansion within the Viking world as they embarked on their voyages of exploration. The Belgian historian Henri Pirenne contends that these voyages were not just acts of pillage, but that archaeological finds in Denmark and Sweden show they were trading with Constantinople (which the Vikings called Miklagård) and Muslim lands on the Black and Caspian Seas. Hoards of Arabic coins have been found in Sweden with dates from this period to the mid-eleventh century. However, a greater mystery than the origin of the Viking expansion is its abrupt demise, which came to a halt in the eleventh century.

The Abbasid rulers of the Muslim world had allowed the passage of Christian pilgrims, but in 1040 they were displaced by the Seljuk Turks, invaders from central Asia. All roads across Asia Minor were then closed to Western Christians attempting to reach the Holy Land. This gave rise to the first crusade when Pope Urban II called upon Christians to help liberate the Holy Lands from the Muslim Turks, who had already overrun most of the Byzantine Empire and were within striking distance of its capital Constantinople. The first crusade, which set out in 1095, was successful in the recapture of Jerusalem and allowed the trade routes to flow once more. This effectively undermined the Vikings’ position and coincides with the period of their rapid decline.

Throughout the Middle Ages demand for Asian goods grew, especially for the spices that made the diet of better-off Europeans palatable. That eventually inspired the search for sea routes free from the political turmoil, dangers and high costs of overland transport, sowing the seeds for a new era where dominion of the seas would give a nation the power and stability to develop trade. The formation of the East India companies transformed the wealth of those that bore the enterprise and hardships to establish them. Not surprisingly, once established they fought hard to maintain their positions. Their merchant ships were heavily armed, their sea charts and business dealings surrounded in secrecy, and their diplomatic powers immense.

In the 1500s Spain and Portugal had command of the seas, and the Catholic world endorsed their control by a Papal decree issued in 1493, in effect giving Spain dominion of the New World and trade with the East to Portugal. Their advances in navigation, mapmaking and ship design ensured their monopoly of the trade routes and their riches. To this end, the Portuguese king controlled the sale of spices by issuing licences to merchants who could then secure cargoes, but had to deliver them to Lisbon where they were purchased by the crown at a fixed price. Authorised merchants could then buy from the crown and sell them on to the open market.

By capturing Spanish ships laden with gold and silver exploited from the New World, Francis Drake and his fellow ‘privateers’ found a more expedient method of obtaining cargoes, but it also began to undermine the Spanish position as masters of the seas. At the same time the Dutch sought to free themselves from the Spanish empire and the Catholic Church. Fuelled by stories of sailors captured and subjected to the tortures of the Spanish Inquisition, thousands of volunteers crossed the Channel to aid the Dutch and Dutch privateers found shelter in English ports in their resolve to break Spanish hegemony. In 1592 the Dutch cartographer Lucas Janszoon Waghenaer published his second sea atlas, which included information obtained by Dutch sailors who had crewed on Portuguese ships, which also gave them a valuable insight into the procedures of conducting trade with Asia. The Dutch already had an established trade with the Baltic, and this gave their merchants the funding to embark on their own expedition to the East.

An oil painting by Andries van Eertvelt depicts the excitement surrounding the arrival of the second Dutch expedition to the East Indies at Amsterdam on 19 July 1599. This was the first commercially successful voyage and led to the establishment of the VOC. The painting shows the Overijssel, Vriesland, Mauritius and Hollandia in the middle distance with numerous smaller vessels surrounding them. (National Maritime Museum BHC0748)

When the first Dutch merchant fleet set out in 1595, the voyage was fraught with difficulties: of the 240 crew that set out, only 87 survived and one of the ships had to be abandoned through lack of manpower. When the remaining ships finally returned in 1597, the cost of the undertaking left little profit for its investors, but it had been successful in showing that the Portuguese monopoly could be broken and it provided the confidence for further investment. When the next fleet returned the unbelievable wealth to be made became apparent and the race was on. Before long there were eight Dutch companies competing for the lucrative trade.

Flag of the Honourable East India Company. Before the red, white and blue national ensigns made their appearance around 1630, all English ships are generally thought to have flown striped ensigns with a St George’s cross in the upper left canton. This tradition appears to have been continued by the East India Company’s ships. When a royal proclamation of 1674 authorised the red ensign for merchant ships, the East India Company was restricted to using their ensigns in eastern waters and beyond the island of St Helena in the Atlantic. Various paintings of the period depict the ensign as having either nine, eleven or thirteen stripes.

In England’s search for foreign trade, Elizabeth I granted Francis Drake leave to attempt their first circumnavigation of the world, which he completed during the years 1577-1580. His course down to the Straits of Magellan was marked more by the disruption of the Spanish Indies than the securing of trade, as he sought to avenge the capture of English sailors and break the Catholic powers’ monopoly of the New World. Although he made some contact with traders in the East and was successful in buying some spices, he failed to gain any real insight into the trading set-up. His voyage did, however, prove the capability of English ships, and he managed to procure a cargo of gold, silver and jewels worth at that time over half a million pounds from Spanish galleons.

The outraged King Philip of Spain, who had already suffered the humiliation of Elizabeth’s refusal of his hand in marriage, demanded Drake’s arrest, but the romantic daring of his deeds had made him a hero throughout the country. Elizabeth met Spain’s request by welcoming his return with the honour of a knighthood; Drake presented her with jewels that were later placed in her crown. The enthusiasm for exploration burgeoned and an expedition followed in 1582 led by Ralph Fitch; but as he spent the next eight years gathering information into the spice trade, Spain geared up for war. Philip’s conquest of Portugal had doubled his power, giving him mastery over the Atlantic and Pacific oceans which he guarded with an unrivalled fleet of ships. Reacting to the defiance of the English crown, Philip declared war and his armada of ships gathered to invade.

The response of the now Sir Francis Drake was to set sail for Spain in an attempt to deplete the fleet and its storeships before they had a chance to set sail. His attack on three ports with fireships completed what he termed his ‘singeing of the King of Spain’s beard’. During the attack on Cadiz in 1587 he captured the Portuguese carrack San Felipe. She had recently returned from the East Indies and, as luck would have it, on board were not only the charts of her voyage but the even more valuable accounts of her trade with the East.

When Fitch returned in 1590 he found no shortage of merchants willing to fund a further expedition and in 1591 three ships led by James Lancaster set out on what proved to be a disastrous voyage. By the time they reached Table Bay at the Cape of Good Hope, scurvy had depleted the crew to such an extent that insufficient remained alive to man the three ships. The Merchant Royal was therefore sent home with the minimum working crew and the sick or dying men. The two remaining ships were hit by a storm off the coast of Mozambique resulting in the total loss of the Penelope and her crew. The Edward Bonaventure eventually reached the East Indies, by which time her crew of 97 had been reduced to 34.

Unable to secure any trading contracts, they resorted instead to raiding Portuguese ships in an attempt to return home with something. The Bonaventure reached the island of St Helena in 1593 where she reprovisioned before setting sail for the final leg home. When further storms drove her off course, Lancaster attempted to reach Trinidad and succeeded in landing at a small island near Puerto Rico. Here the ship was mysteriously cut adrift with only five men and a boy onboard, and she was presumed lost at sea. Lancaster and a remaining handful of men finally reached England on 24 May 1594 to join those that had survived from the Merchant Royal which had miraculously made the journey home. The loss of life, ships and investors’ money dampened even the most enthusiastic of merchants’ ambitions and it was not until 1599 that news of Dutch success inspired a group of 101 London merchants to raise a joint investment of £30,000 to fund a further voyage...