82 The Newsletter of the SOUTH WEST MARITIME HISTORY SOCIETY ` ISSN 1360-6980 CONTENTS –NO. 82 – April 2011 Edited by Jonathan Seagrave EDITORIAL 2 REPORTS OF MEETINGS Aylesbeare 4 REVIEWS William Strike rev. David Clement 8 Destroyer Down rev. Roger Bunbury 9 Admiral Philip rev. Michael Pentreath 11 Books Noted 13 LETTERS NOTES AND NEWS 14 WEBERY 20 UPCOMING EVENTS 23 OFFICERS and COMMITTEE back cover WEBSITE. www.swmaritime.org.uk Individual contributions © Individual contributors. Entire journal © South West Maritime History Society 2011 1 EDITORIAL Firstly, a very warm welcome to recently joined members. We hope you will enjoy belonging to the Society, and that we will have the chance to meet you at a meeting . If you feel like contributing to Soundings or the Journal, or reviewing books, do not hesitate to get in touch, and we are always looking for speakers. It is time to restate how membership is handled. New members should send their application and cheque/SO mandate to our new Membership secretary, Britt Zerbe. Thereafter, changes in contact details should be notified to him, but queries on payment should go to the Treasurer, Philip Northcott. To obtain your password to the members side of the website, contact Dave Hills, the Webmaster. As well as the extensive public material, much further information lies inside, as well as the contact details of all members. This is easy to search, and thus to find others with common interests. The most recent back number of Soundings will be sent to new members, and older ones are available if you send me an A5 s.a.e. All contacts are on the back cover. Emails are best sent via the form on the website, which ensures the correct person receives the message. We have a growing membership directly involved with heritage boats, and welcome news from all of them. Those relying on charter and public sailing all have to work very hard, and deserve our support, not only for ourselves , but also for family and friends. A gift of a sail may be just what is needed to really fire up one of the younger generation’s interest in our maritime history and heritage. Let us hope the celebrations for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee on the 3rd June next year, with the proposal for a massive procession of vessels down the Thames, awakens greater interest from the wider public. Any thoughts on how we as a Society might participate would be very welcome -- perhaps even charter a vessel ? Note this is a slimline edition to go out with calling notices.. There are some good articles in the pipeline for future editions. Jonathan Seagrave Next copy date: June 1st 2011 Membership Secretary 6 Beare Square Beare Broadclyst Mr Britt ZERBE Exeter EX5 3JZ Email [email protected] 2 FUTURE MEETINGS AND OTHER EVENTS 21st May Swansea. Waterfront Maritime Museum. See calling notice. ffi Dale Thomas June 4th Seas, Seamen & Shipping Meeting at SS Great Britain ffi see end June 11th AGM, Topsham Exeter June 20th AFW Admiralty House, Mount Wise, Preparation .for the Falklands War ffi Martin Hazell July 6th RM Barracks Plymouth see calling notice. Ffi Martin Hazell September 9 th to 11th Maritime History Conference, Exeter ffi Helen Doe 8th October Lyme Regis details tbc 20th November Clovelly Herring festival (Italics indicate an event of interest but not organised directly by the Society) . Confirmation of events will be published either in the next edition or in calling notices for bookings, which will be sent to members at the appropriate time. 3 REPORTS OF MEETINGS SWMHS – Members’ Interactive Meeting – Aylesbeare – 12th March 2011. David Pulvertaft – Figureheads David’s slot was intended to summarise the research that lay behind his next book – Figureheads of the Royal Navy – being published in September by ‘Seaforth Publishing’. Showing examples of the what artefacts and drawings he had found over the years, he listed the main sources at The National Archives (ADM 87 & 106); the fruitful areas within the National Maritime Museum (Figureheads, Ship Plans and Ship Models collections); other Ship Model collections (Science Museum, Annapolis Museum, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Kriegstein Collection); the Imperial War Museum’s photographic archive; the collections at the National Museum of the Royal Navy and finally the previously unpublished Dickerson Archive privately owned in Australia. His hope was that, by explaining how these sources could be used, other members of the Society could enhance their own research. The Dutch Fleet At Sidmouth There are 10 ships in designs on handmade tiles in a fireplace in Knowle, East Devon District Council’s Offices, Sidmouth. Some tiles have other designs. However, of the Sidmouth ship tiles, the Dutch Tile Museum, Otterlo near Utrecht has written that: “no other examples are known to have survived” and that “they provide a brief illustrated Dutch maritime history” The Amsterdam Ship Museum has concurred. The Fleet – three examples A boeier appears on one tile. Boeiers were inland waters & coastal vessels, functionally similar to Thames spritsail barges, though they were larger, of 50 to 100 tons burden. They traded from late 16th c to 20th c. This is one of the larger boeiers, designed for the Rouen trade. It has luff poles at the bow rather than a bowsprit suggesting an early form. 4 An armed merchantman commemorates the Battle of the Sound in 1658 when Dutch and Danish allies repulsed Sweden’s attempt to seize the Danish side of Øresund to control traffic into & from the Baltic. The ship has a combination of Danish and Dutch flags; the spritsail topsail is of the period. A technologically advanced Schooner is depicted. It is a Grand Banks fish-hunter of the late 19th c. The Fireplace There are 47 tiles. Several designs appear in more than one version. Because they are hand- made, each version is slightly different. As well as ships, the fireplace also has designs of children’s play & adults’ leisure. Knowle’s history & change of use has led to a loss of any record of the tiles’ purchase. It was built in 1810 and had a succession of private occupants until 1882, when it was sold and redeveloped as a luxury hotel. After 2 years profitable operation, a substantial rebuilding programme was planned. This occurred at various times between 1889 to 1904. From 1940 the Air Ministry used it as a nurses’ training facility until 1945, when it was sold to the Southern Railway, again as an hotel. This was unprofitable and from 1950 there were several attempts to sell it. It has continued as local government offices from 1964 to the present. Folk memory of the fireplace’s existence was lost with Knowle’s varied incarnations and reconstructions and it was not “rediscovered” until 2005. It is sited obscurely in a corner of a committee room, where I had seen it several times, when using the room as an artists’ retiring room for Sidmouth concerts, but initially I took no notice of it. However an interest in maritime history eventually led me to scrutinise it more thoroughly. It was obvious that it was an object of value worthy of research. Provenance: steps towards attribution 1. The Schooner would not have sailed before the late 19th c and therefore dates the tiles to this period at the earliest. 2. Hand-made tiles require use of a design template on which transparent paper is laid and pin-pricked. The paper is then placed on a glazed tile blank and dusted with charcoal. Blue glaze is applied, guided by the charcoal outline and the tile is fired a second time. Collections of past designs bound into model books were sold on to successive potters. One template, Kinderspel, known to have been used by the Utrecht potters Brothers van Ravesteyn, was clearly used in making the Sidmouth tile, Bird-snaring. 5 3. To conclude, the Sidmouth tiles measure 6” x 6” and the only Dutch tile potters making tiles of this size were the Ravesteyn Brothers. Encouraged by William Morris’s interest, they saw an opportunity to export to England. The Sidmouth tiles are undoubtedly Ravesteyn tiles. Danger Proper care of the tiles is problematic for East Devon District Council. Knowle is unprotected and would be demolished if the council were to relocate to a cheaper office. This may be enforced by the need to economise and is under current consideration. Furthermore, though the tiles are a public asset, the public is denied access to them. My project, therefore, is to identify a suitable new home for the tiles, to persuade the council to agree to their removal and reinstallation, and to identify sources of finance to pay for a specialist conservation tiler to undertake this. David Jenkinson [email protected] A longer article, with pictures, on the ship tiles may be published in Maritime South West 2012. 6 The Career of Thomas Saumarez James Saumarez gave a summary of the research he had recently completed to write the book on the naval career of his great-grandfather, Thomas Saumarez. He started with a synopsis of the man’s career, starting as a Midshipman during operations against Argentina (1845-6), and then as a Lieutenant in the Slavery Suppression Squadron and the attack on Lagos (1851); next in command of the gunboat HMS Cormorant he sailed to China to take part in the 2nd Opium war, but his career came to an untimely end following an appointment as Flag Captain on the South American Station. (1861-2). James explained that his main source was Thomas’s ‘Private and Public Journal’ and several letters and documents that had been happily preserved, but he had also used The National Archive Centre and Maritime Museum to retrieve log books, senior officers’ reports and ships’ plans, and had used the internet to download service records and pages from the London Gazette.