Ship's Figureheads

I've been writing again which is a good thing. I've started a short story that I am sort of in love with and it has occupied a lot of my time lately. I'm not going to talk about the story except to say that it requires a little bit of research on two of my favorite maritime art subjects --- ship's figureheads and sailor's valentines. So today I thought I'd blog about figureheads.

Shortly after I moved to New England in 1987 I became entranced by ship's figureheads. I'd never seen them before, outside of the movies anyway, and suddenly I was spotting them everywhere --- over the doors of shops and restaurants, in the gables of houses, in marine store windows. I began a sketch journal in which I drew them and documented where I saw them. I'm glad I did because a lot of them have disappeared which is too bad.

Probably one of the greatest collections of figureheads is in the Peabody-Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts (above). There are figureheads all over the place in that museum but the hall of figureheads shown above is enough to take your breath away. There is something kind of super-hero-ish about those figures and, I suppose that when you consider how many sailors counted on their ship's guardian to see them through storms, that is not an entirely inappropriate metaphor.

Actually, back in the days of sail, New England ships did not sport a lot of ornamentation for the simple reason that a good many of the ships were owned by Quaker businessmen who eschewed ornamentation. But from the Vikings on many ships, especially of European origin, carried some sort of figurehead. There is a good history of figureheads at The Figurehead Archive.

Over the years as I traveled around --- Mystic Seaport, Nantucket Whaling Museum, Halifax, Nova Scotia's Maritime Museum --- I kept photographing and drawing the figureheads I like. My favorites were the figures of women mostly because I loved to think about what their carvers had been thinking of when they carved them and what they came to mean to the men who sailed with them. The truth is some of the carving is really bad and clumsy but, in a sense, that makes them all the more fascinating. The figurehead at left is on the 171-foot Friendship of Salem which is a replica of a 1797 East India tall ship. While the figurehead is reasonably well-done, the facial features are not articulated. A common feature of early figureheads.

New Bedford is one of the richest troves for finding unexpected figureheads. They peak out from under the eaves of houses and canopies of shops. There was a shop called Moby Dick that had a wonderful little figurehead mounted over its door. The New Bedfor Whaling Museum has a fine collection including the figure at left which is the one I used as a model when I described the figurehead hanging over the bar in the Old Mermaid Inn in The Old Mermaid's Tale. Actually it is a combination of that one and a figurehead that used to hang over the door of the Rhumb Line Tavern here in Gloucester. That one was removed because it was too damaged by the elements but now hangs inside.

But of all the figureheads I have seen the one I am most partial too is a tiny little one --- only a few inches tall --- attached to the pulpit in the Seaman's Bethel in New Bedford (left). The pulpit is shaped like the prow of a ship and was so famously described in Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Every time I have been in the Bethel I am always awed by the sense of silence reverence that is held there. One cannot help but think of all the prayers that place has been home to for mariners heading out and mariners lost and mariners never-to-return. For some reason that tiny little lady with her hands crossed demurely over her breast seems appropriate as a symbol of hope --- such a tiny thing against something so vast as the sea.

Thanks for reading.