With royal approval the figurehead of HMS Queen Charlotte: earlier this year, a model for the figurehead of HMS Queen Charlotte, launched in 1790, was acquired by the Historic Dockyard, Chatham. Richard Hunter explains the importance of this carving, a design for one of the Royal Navy's last great figureheads, made in Chatham for Lord Howe's flagship in the war against France

Apollo, Oct, 2005 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. (1) This small yet exquisitely carved limewood and gesso-covered model (Fig. 1) 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.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

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.

At some time in the intervening period, careful consideration would have been given to the style and subject-matter of the figurehead, which would also play a crucial part in the overall design of the ship. By the time orders and details reached the carvers at Chatham there would be little if any room for ambiguity. Fortunately, the original written specification for this figurehead survives in the Admiralty archives. Although ambitious to the point of being impractical, in many ways it corresponds very well indeed with the surviving maquette, albeit with a few modifications:

   In the head is Her Majesty in her
   robes with orb and scepter in her
   hands, standing erect under a canopy
   with two doves thereon, which is
   supported by two boys, the emblems
   of peace, one holding a dove, the
   other a palm branch: under which on
   the starboard side is Britannia sitting
   on a lion and presenting a laurel: on
   the larboard side is Plenty sitting on
   a sea-horse offering the produce of
   the sea and land; on the starboard
   trail board Justice and Prudence with
   emblems; on the larboard trail board
   are two boys. Hope and Fortitude,
   with their emblems. (4)

Armed with this one-dimensional document, numbering a brief but relatively precise 102 words, the designers would have produced a number of preparatory sketches. The yard's master carver would, by virtue of his lengthy experience in the design and construction of such carvings, be in a position to make his own creative interpretation of this important commission. Certain elements within the design brief were relatively easy to visualise, since figures such as Britannia and Plenty are standard models in the pantheon of personifications of the time, as are Justice, Prudence, Hope and Fortitude. Once their position had been established within the overall group, it would be a matter of establishing the individual attitude of each figure and how one element would interconnect with its neighbour in a cohesive flow.