From Ship to Shore

This half model is displayed in a wooden frame with intricate fan designs at its top corners and center. It was once displayed in a saloon in Philadelphia. Shadowboxes or half models were crafted both at sea and ashore. Shadowbox is a term for the frame constructed by a craftsman for displaying and preserving a waterline model. These models, carved in low relief and decoratively painted, show the vessel as it sails the seas, so some of the hull or ship’s body is covered by waves. Some shadowboxes are complete ship replicas, but more often they depict half a ship. Makers often place a mirror at the back of the case to give the illusion of a full-rounded ship in motion. Paintings of the horizon, lighthouses, and other maritime motifs typically accent the model. Ships were mounted on boards decorated to simulate the sea; waves were made of putty or wooden shavings.

Seamen occasionally used whalebone to construct extraordinary pieces of furniture, such as this rare example of an armchair made from the bones of a bowhead whale. The chair’s joints are connected with iron-lag bolts. It originally belonged to Captain William Grant of British Columbia, who served as the president of the Pacific Whaling Company in the early 1900s.

This sea chest displays an oval painting of a three-masted ship on its inside lid. A label on the chest’s interior records that a sailor in China purchased it and painted the ship as he sailed past the Farallon Islands. In 1888, the chest was sold to Captain Rudolph Smale, who wrote about his seafaring journeys in There Go the Ships, which was published in 1940.

Sea chests served as the most treasured of the seafarer’s possessions aboard a vessel. They held sailors’ personal belongings and also could serve as a seat or a table. Many sea chests had internal compartments and a painted inner lid that depicted a maritime theme. Two fancy rope-work handles, which made the chest easier to lift, typically adorned each side of the chest.

This octagonal tabletop is inlaid with various woods. The edges of the tabletop contain inlaid stars; its center is filled with masonic, religious, and navigational motifs. The artisan’s signature appears at the top center. Its maker, the ship’s carpenter, constructed the table aboard the schooner Ellen Austin during her long journey from San Francisco to New York in 1869. At that time, the 14,000-mile journey from coast-to-coast took approximately three to seven months. Ships had to sail all the way down to Cape Horn, the southernmost reach in South America, until the Panama Canal was completed in 1914. Cape Horn was considered to be one of the most treacherous waterways to cross due to frequently violent weather conditions.

To make ships more beautiful, they were often decorated with elaborate carvings. In addition to figureheads, carvings could also be found on the ship’s interior. Even smaller ships’ parts might be embellished and simple utilitarian pieces delicately carved. This varnished woodcarving of the head and forequarters of recumbent lion is mounted on a wooden baseboard. Lions were popular figureheads on English, Dutch, Scandinavian, and Spanish ships. This lion is from a matching pair that formerly served as exterior decorations at the break of the poop deck on the English barque Himalaya. A poop deck is the highest deck on the rear of a ship, near the stern that doubles as a roof for the cabin below it. The name derives from the French word forstern, poupe.

This male figurehead fragment is all that remains of the 1,534 ton iron-built barque Roderick Dhu, constructed in 1873 in Sunderland, England, by Mounsey & Foster.

The use of figureheads on ships dates to ancient civilizations. Traditionally, ships had carved or painted figureheads on the bow. Figureheads served as the focal point of sailing ships until the turn of the twentieth century. Figureheads on larger merchant ships or naval warships were particularly elaborate. Smaller ships such as brigs and schooners also displayed figureheads or featured smaller upright busts.

Figureheads came in many forms: women; men; historic figures; Native Americans; and animals, both real and mythological or fantastical. In some cases, their pictorial forms represented the name of the vessel. Most of the figureheads that remain extant date from the mid- to late 1800s. American figurehead carvers apprenticed under a master carver for approximately five years. They often received inspiration for subject matter from imagery in books and prints. Craftsmen typically supplemented their incomes with other assignments such as mantels, architectural carvings, shop figures, and signs.

Although whalebone and ivory were valuable, a whaler’s main profits came from the oil processed from whale blubber. As a result, whale teeth and bone were readily available to sailors. Scrimshaw, one of the earliest forms of American folk art, refers to carving whale teeth or ivory, bone, and walrus tusks into decorative and practical items, and to the imagery engraved on these items. Whalers made scrimshaw by smoothing and polishing ivory and then chiseling a design into the surface with a sharp tool, such as a jackknife. Ink, charcoal, and other bottled or solid pigments brought on the voyage were rubbed into the etched surface with a brush or finger. Mariners etched a variety of imagery such as ships, women, patriotic symbols, whaling scenes, historical figures, and foreign ports on pieces. Scrimshaw served as tokens of the sailor’s travels and were given as gifts to family members.

American whaling flourished from the late 1700s to the late 1800s. Whale oil was used to illuminate lamps, make candles, soap, and a number of other products. Numerous ships left New Bedford, Nantucket, and other American ports on long voyages in search of these immense creatures.San Francisco was a major American whaling port from approximately 1875 to 1910. Commercial whaling commenced in the Atlantic, but as whale populations began to dwindle due to overfishing, whalers traveled as far as the Pacific and Arctic oceans. Men lived together in extremely cramped quarters for periods as long as three to five years. Their dangerous goal entailed capturing, killing, and processing whales at sea. After seamen cut whale blubber into strips, it was boiled into oil aboard ships. These periods of strenuous and intense activity were offset by tediously slow times at sea. During this time, men often made scrimshaw to pass the time. Imaginative whalers thought of many practical items to make from ivory or whalebone, including swifts or yarn winders, pie crimpers, and rulers.

Waterfront saloons in San Francisco and other ports commonly contained crafts made by sailors at sea. Sailors exchanged scrimshaw and other decorative items for a few libations.

This rudder yoke, in the form of dolphins, may have been from an admiral or navy officer’s boat, which was referred to as a barge.

The lives of the nineteenth-century seafaring men were starkly different from those ashore. Most tradesmen, and even coastal fisherman, returned home to their families in the evenings. But the mariner who set sail on a long voyage might endure months or even years before seeing his family again. So it is no surprise that sailors acquired a variety of mementoes from different ports they visited to give to wives or sweethearts. Seamen enjoyed purchasing souvenirs made from exotic wood, horn, and other unusual material. Glass was another popular medium for souvenirs, particularly rolling pins, many of which came from England. Sailors also made or purchased carved and painted shells from distant lands, such as New Caledonia.

The steamship Clansman was built in 1884 by Blackwood & Gordon in Port Glasgow, Scotland, for the Northern Steamship Company of New Zealand. It operated for more than forty years on the New Zealand Coast. The identity of the artist who painted the panels remains unknown. When the ship was disassembled in the 1930s, Captain E. J. Keatley gave the windowpanes to Fred K. Klebingat, who commanded the schooner Melrose throughout the 1920s. Melrose was the last regular schooner out of San Francisco carrying lumber to Fiji and Tonga. Klebingat had admired the panels as a Clansman passenger in 1927.

Maritime glass painting probably began around the second half of the 1700s and continued into the early 1900s. Painted glass panels not only served as windowpanes on ships, but also as decorative paintings in people’s homes. Captains and ship owners commissioned portraits of their ships with harbor views in the background from amateur and professional painters at various ports they visited.

In 1815, Congress passed a law that required vessels to have their names displayed on their sterns and also that name boards or quarter boards be affixed to ships’ bows or quarterdecks. This requirement resulted in a variety of beautiful ships’ signs. Specialists who carved figureheads commonly made these signs. The letters on ships’ signs were carefully cut and often filled with gold leaf or painted in order to show the name clearly at a distance.

During the mid-1800s, when manufacturers began mass-producing bottles, the art of making ships-in-bottles became commonplace. The technique of fabricating and placing ships-in-bottles required a great deal of patience and skill. The secret to the craft requires the models to be built outside the bottle in complete detail and secured to the bottle’s interior with putty. The ship is placed inside the bottle with the masts and rigging lying lengthwise on the deck. The maker gently pulls a cord connected to the masts that extends outside the bottle’s neck; this raises the masts and rigging. To position additional parts, craftsmen might employ a long instrument through the bottle’s mouth before sealing the bottle. Craftsmen fabricate ships’ sails from paper, cloth, or thin wood; most hulls or bodies are whittled from wood. Artisans craft waves from materials such as wooden shavings and often produce elaborate backdrops or waterfront scenes.

Decorative ropework is one of the oldest forms of folk art. The average sailor learned a complete repertoire of intricate knots and fancy ropework. Ropework served utilitarian purposes by improving the handling of objects aboard vessels. For instance, handrails entwined with cord reduced slippage in wet weather, while fancy knots on bell rope gave the ringer a better grip. When seafarers had free time, especially in good weather, they might craft rope handles, or beckets, to fasten at either ends of a chest for lifting and transporting. Handles provided strength, flexibility, and decoration. These loops were often elaborately crafted with intricate knots, then waxed or painted, fastened to wooden cleats, and attached to a chest with screws or nails.