A View of Christmas Harbour, 1784

A View of Christmas Harbour in Kerguelen's Island, engraved by Newton after John Webber, 1784, Davidson Galleries.

Thanks once more to Adam Hodges-LeClaire for pointing this out to me!

The harbor seen here was originally drawn by John Webber over the week of Christmas in 1776. Webber was accompanying the famous explorer Captain James Cook on the Discovery and Resolution. Cook wrote in his journal on December 24:

I immidiately dispatched Mr [William] Bligh the Master in a boat to Sound the Harbour, who on his return reported it to be safe and commodious with good anchorage in every part, and great plenty of fresh water, Seals, Penguins and other birds on the shore but not a stick of Wood.

Webber's original drawing, in the collection of the British Library, shows a slightly different scene. The penguins are still milling about, but there is no club bearing sailor come to hunt them. Two are already dead by his feet. It is unclear why the sailor was later added, and who put him in there. Perhaps he was drawn to add some action to an otherwise rather static scene. There is another version, colorized, in the collection of the State Library of New South Wales, that includes the club carrying sailor.

Our tar wears a cap or round hat with very short brim. His jacket (blue in the State Library of NSW version) runs to the natural waist, and his plain white trousers with side seam pockets end at about the bottom of the calf, revealing his white stockings.

The Whale Fishery and Killing the Bears, 1744

The Whale Fishery and Killing the Bears, engraving from "Navigantium atque itinirantium bibliotheca," Volume 2, T. Woodward, 1744, John Carter Brown Library.

Whalers are only rarely featured on this blog. I would like to change that. Today's print depicts a number of ships all harpooning whales and killing bears in the Arctic.

The sailors all wear jackets which end about the top of the thigh. Their hats are a mixture of round and cocked, with a couple of caps thrown in for good measure.

These tars attack a bear with harpoons and a comically oversized club. These men wear very small cocked hats, jacket that match the fellows afloat, and a mix of breeches and trousers.

Family Compact, 1778

Family Compact, artist unknown, 1778, Walpole Library.

Lampooning the alliance between the French and Spanish during the American Revolutionary War, the artist depicts caricatures of France and Spain bound unhappily together. They sit on the "Stool of Repentance" with sour looks, under the guard of the familiar metaphor for Britain on the world scene: Jack Tar.

He wears a reversed cocked hat trimmed with white tape and bearing a large cockade. At his neck is a striped neckcloth, tied well above the collar of his plain white shirt. Though he wears no waistcoat, this tarpawlin wears a typical short jacket without pockets, and bearing open mariner's cuffs with cloth covered buttons. His slops are plain, and end right at the knees, allowing us a peek at his breeches. White stockings fit into round toed shoes with rectangular buckles. Unsurprisingly, he holds a cudgel or walking stick.

Charity Begins at Home, c.1780

Charity Begins at Home, Robert Sayer, c.1780, British Museum.

Echoing the parable of the Good Samaritan, a pompous reverend turns his nose up at a begging sailor and ignores the needy woman and child beyond them, all while raising a flask to his lips. Such a message hardly requires any further reading. The metaphor is surface level and effective.

At the center of the piece, and drawing the first tug of sympathy, is a ragged sailor.

Jack holds out his round hat with a very narrow brim for a few spare coins. Interestingly, the tar's head is not bare; he wears a workman's cap. His single breasted short jacket ends just below the waist, is lined in white, with open mariner's cuffs. Beneath is a waistcoat without a cutaway that ends at the waist. Our tarpawlin's slops are torn to shreds, but enough to cover him all the way to below the knee. From there we see his peg leg, and a black stocking on his one good leg. In his opposite hand he holds a cane or cudgel.

The Sailor's Joyful Return, date unknown

The Sailor's Joyful Return, artist unknown, date unknown, National Maritime Museum.

I've been holding on to this image since this blog began. The provenance on this piece is so imprecise, I really wasn't sure that I could include it. Sailors clothing, as I'm sure you've noticed by now, changes very slowly. A tar in slops, a round hat, no waistcoat, and blue jacket would be just as at home in the 1730's as the 1790's or later. Thankfully, sailors aren't the only ones in this image.

The print is a "sailor's return" cliche, and no such return would be complete without women!

Based on the sleeve length and style of headwear, my wife gave me the tentative date of 1780's for this piece, which would place it within our study.

The sailors are variously dressed: round hats and knit caps; green, blue, and red jackets; slops and trousers. The sailor who sits on the far right of the above detail has his back turned to us, and appears to be wearing turnbacks on his jacket! This style is more familiar in regimental uniforms than on a common tar. It is also worth noting that the sailor in the green jacket with white lining carries a cudgel of some sort. Both he and the sailor who reaches for his lass wear single breasted white waistcoats with a slight cutaway.

A New Method of Macarony Making, As Practiced at Boston in North America, 1775

A New Method of Macarony Making, As Practiced at Boston in North America, Carington Bowles, 1775, University of Wisconsin Digital Library for the Decorative Arts and Material Culture.

From the beginning of this project, I have been searching for a high resolution copy of this print, and finally I have stumbled across it! The University of Wisconsin's Digital Library for the Decorative Arts and Material Culture has faithfully reproduced this rare image.

Even to an eye only somewhat familiar with political cartoons of the American Revolutionary era, the central figure (covered in feathers, bent on one knee and begging to be released from the noose fitted about his neck) is an obvious copy.

Library of Congress

Even the title has been lifted from a popular piece that was published only a year before. Unlike many lazy attempts to cash in on popular prints by reproducing the exact same print (only worse), Bowles used only the central figure of the original and expanded the rest of the scene dramatically.

Bowles also added a short ditty to explain the scene:

For the Custom House Officers landing the Tea ; / They Tarr'd him and Feather'd him just as you see, / And they drench'd him so well both behind and before / That he begg'd for God's sake they would drench him no more.

Sure enough, we find the begging Tory at the feet of American tars.

Perhaps taking his cue from John Adams famous description of the Boston mobs as "a motley rabble of saucy boys, negros and mullatos, Irish teagues and outlandish Jack tars," Bowles illustrates a black and a white sailor. The seaman on the right wears a knit cap (possibly a thrummed cap) decorated with a large cockade.  His dotted neckcloth hangs over a striped waistcoat, beneath a fairly typical single breasted short jacket. His mate, ready to haul the Tory aloft by his neck, also wears a dotted neckcloth, but has much fancier headwear: a cocked hat with large cockade and lace tape. Perhaps further indicating his position as a leader among the violent mariners, his jacket is also lined with tape around his cuffs, waist pockets, and lapels. A plain waistcoat is fitted beneath, and a simple pair of trousers complete his slop clothes.

To the far left in the foreground is a short sailor, perhaps a lad. He wears a round cap, probably a knit cap judging by the stripes. His jacket is very short, barely extending past the waist, with mariner's scalloped cuffs buttoned closed. Otherwise he wears striped slops, a solid color neckcloth, and striped slops. 

Amid the crowd, right at the foot of the gallows, is a sailor heaving a stone at the helpless and prostrate man. His is a short brimmed round hat. Over his triple vented jacket is tied a dark neckcloth bordered in a lighter color, and beneath it is a pair of close fit striped trousers. Along with many of the other jacks, he carries a stick or cudgel.

Smiling as he watches the scene beside another Bostonian (probably not a sailor judging by his hair length, frock coat, and stockings), yet another tarpawlin wields a cudgel. Another thrummed cap with cockade, just like that worn by the black sailor, is visible here. His jacket is also lined with tape, but is double breasted. A white neckcloth, striped waistcoat, and plain trousers finish him off.

At the far right of the crowd another sailor gestures toward the Boston Tea Party. The infamous December 1774 event did not occur alongside a tar and feathering, but this sailor may be a visual key by the artist to indicate how the chronologically separate events are linked through the same violent rabble. 

Regardless, this sailor wears a cocked hat with the point forward and a large cockade, a solid colored neckcloth, short jacket with no waist pockets and trimmed around the cuffs and armscye, single breasted waistcoat with stripes that only appear straight down the front along the buttons stand, and a pair of striped trousers.

The Tea Party participants have foregone their Indian garb in favor of sailor's clothing. Trousers that areplain, horizontally striped, and vertically striped, accompany short jackets with slash cuffs and, in one case, even a striped jacket. Striped jackets are mentioned here and there in textual accounts of sailors, but rarely turn up in art depicting them. What's great about this piece is that this sailor is not the only one with a striped jacket.

To the left of the scaffold stands a young man waving his cudgel, but his eyes are fixed on a man symbolically pissing into a teapot:

Hatless, he too wears a striped jacket, accompanied by plain slops.

Election Troops, Bringing in their Accounts, to the Pay Table, 1788

Election Troops, bringing in their accounts, to the Pay Table, James Gillray, 1788, British Museum.

In his typical biting satire, Gillray shows Pitt directing all of his brigands to the "back" of the treasury to receive pay for election fraud and voter intimidation. Cudgels and bloody bayonets abound, along with tickets describing the tasks of each blackguard. 

At the far left is a sailor, who holds a paper inscribed with: "For kicking up a Riot." Beside him is another tar, this one wearing the same slop clothes as his mate. What makes him unusual is that he portrayed as a shockingly racist caricature of a black sailor.

There are few images of black sailors in my period of study, but thus far they have been more realistic depictions of mariners of African descent, as in Rowlandson's The Jovial Crew.

It is probably that Gillray is trying to emphasize the meanness of the crowd by making one of the sailors a version of "black" that can be dismissed as less human. He has portrayed the sort of figure that is more common in antebellum American minstrel shows than in depictions of sailors from the eighteenth century.

The violent tar  in the foreground wears a black round hat with a blue bow on the right side. His short jacket is double breasted with open slash cuffs and cloth covered buttons. There are no waist pockets. About his neck is a yellow neckcloth with red stripes, the same neckcloth that his mate wears. His trousers are white with narrow vertical red stripes that end above the bottom of his calf. His stockings are white and his shoes are pointed toe with white metal rectangular buckles.

Both sailors hats bear a badge reading "Hood." These are election badges worn by all of the paid supporters in this piece, and do not represent a ship's name or specific naval affiliation, unlike the badges worn by the crew of the Edgar in William Henry Bunbury's From a Sketch taken at Portsmouth. The Edgar's men are still the only sailors I am aware of in my period of study that wore the name of their ship on their hats.