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Lot 92

A rare and important Privateer wine glass for The Lyon, circa 1756-60

1 December 2021, 10:30 GMT

London, Knightsbridge

Sold for £31,500 inc. premium

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A rare and important Privateer wine glass for The Lyon, circa 1756-60

The bucket bowl engraved with the three-masted ship in full sail, inscribed around the rim 'Success to the LYON Privateer', on a double-series opaque twist stem containing a pair of gauze corkscrews, over a conical foot, 15.2cm high

Footnotes

Provenance
Sir Hugh Dawson Collection, Sotheby's sale, 13 May 1960, lot 31
Walter F Smith Collection, Sotheby's sale, 4 December 1967, lot 225
Seton Veitch Collection
With Delomosne and Son
Trevor Davis Collection
With Delomosne and Son, 28 November 2013
Patrick and Mavis Walker Collection

Literature
Percy Bate, English Table Glass (1905), pl.LXV, no.246
Arthur Churchill, History in Glass (1937), pl.22, no.103
E B Haynes, Apollo, May 1940, fig.9
E B Haynes, Glass Through the Ages (1948), pl.85e
Delomosne and Son, The Seton Veitch Collection (2006), no.42

This glass belongs to a group of wine glasses with bucket-shaped bowls presumed to have been made for Bristol Privateers. In their catalogue, Delomosne and Son note that this may be the only known glass for the 'Lyon', but a slightly smaller glass for this ship had been withdrawn from a Sotheby's sale on 21 July 1934.

The Privateers were in effect officially sanctioned pirate-ships. The Lyon was an active Bristol-based ship of 360 tons with 24 guns and a crew of 250 men, declared on 11 September 1756 and commanded by Captain Robert How. Discrepancies in the spelling of the name of the same ship are recorded in a letter from Bristol of 11 April 1757, reproduced in The London Chronicle (no.49)...

'The Lion [sic] Privateer... fought two Hours with the Victory, Privateer of Bayonne, disabled her Masts' and that 'Captain How, who commands the Lyon, afterwards fell in with the Man of War and the Privateer, and the French Captain told him, that he lost 25 Men in the Engagement with him, though Captain How had not a Man wounded'.

Between January and April 1757 The Lyon Privateer captured no less than six foreign vessels. For example, The London Chronicle notes that in January 1757 (no.10) it captured 'the Mermaid, bound from St. Domingo for Nantz, laden with 323 Hogsheads of Sugar, 4320 lb. of Indigo, and 15 Tons of Coffee', in March 1757 (no.38) 'The Industry, Boreland, from Carolina, for London, is retaken by the Lyon Privateer of Bristol, and sent into Yarmouth', in April 1757 (no.41) 'A French Privateer of 10 Carriage Guns, 12 Swivels, and 80 Men, is taken by the Lyon Privateer, and carried into Falmouth', and the same month (no.50) 'The Catherine, from Rochelle for Cayenne and the Acadia from Bourdeaux for Quebeck are taken by the Lyon Privateer of Bristol, Capt. How, and carried into Bristol'.

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