Lot 5

A Fine and Unusual Dockyard Builder's Model of the 28 Gun Frigate "Revenge" c.1754
173x53x76cm(68x21x30in)

Amended

Nelson and the Royal Navy 1750-1815

5 July 2005, 11:00 BST

London, New Bond Street

£30,000 - £50,000

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A Fine and Unusual Dockyard Builder's Model of the 28 Gun Frigate "Revenge" c.1754

built for the Honourable East India Company's Bombay fleet, to a scale of approximately 1:24. Hull of polished teak, pinned plank on frame with ebony wale. Pierced with 10 lidded gun ports per side, sweep oar ports amidships and lead scuppers. Split channels with deadeyes and chainplates. Finely carved, gilded and polychrome figurehead of an Indian Prince drawing a scimitar, with carved and gilded trailboards and beakhead. Stern and quarter galleries with detailed opening windows, carved and gilded scrollwork with supporting figures, painted coat of arms and stern lantern. A painted and gilded inscription across the transom reads "REVENGE BUILT BY LOWJEE BBAY". Laid timber decks, the heads with opening hatches and sailor's round houses, foredeck with catheads to either side, bitts and stub foremast, belfry. Side ladder down to main deck with riding bitts, hatch with gratings, central capstan, solid hatch and boat skid, stub mainmast with bilge pump pipes. Full-width bulkhead with opening doors to aft accommodation spaces, including further bulkheads and opening doors. Ladder access both sides to long quarter deck with removable hatches to access and view interior, chicken coops and wheel brackets (wheel missing) aft of the stub mizzen. Mounted on crutches on a wooden base, in a glazed showcase. Also includes an iron anchor and a brass cannon on a wooden carriage. Some minor later repairs. 173x53x76cm(68x21x30in)

Footnotes

Property of the Royal Solent Yacht Club.

This model was presented to the Club by Sir Arthur Cope in around 1925, after it had been on loan to the Science Museum in South Kensington for ten years. He had inherited it from his father Charles West Cope RA, a successful artist, but it is not known when the model left India.

Unlike the more commonly seen Navy Board Models, very few Indian Yard models are known and the only other example of an East Indiaman in the UK is the very much larger Cornwallis, which is at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. The ten gun ports, rather than the commoner twelve, might indicate an experimental design, which could have warranted the building of a special model.

Saleroom notices

The revised estimate is £70,000-80,000

Additional information

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A Fine and Unusual Dockyard Builder's Model of the 28 Gun Frigate "Revenge" c.1754 173x53x76cm(68x21x30in)