Because: (1) the collection was the greatest private one in the world; (2) it contained so many notable “admiralty” models which are really works of art; (3) it was made by purchases from some of the finest private collections in Europe; (4) of the eleven seventeenth-century cabinets in which the contemporary models were displayed;1 and (5) of the news value attached to the fact that the collection was appraised and insured at the time for $280,000 (depression values). Some appraisals ran to a million dollars but these were considered from the collectors’ viewpoint—not aggregates of forced sales of individual models, nor replacement values, which of course were impossible. In any event from a collector’s point of view it was almost priceless.
Had the Congress not accepted this collection in accordance with the will2 it would have been held in trust for Colonel Rogers’ first grandson, Peter Salm, until he became of age.
Its transfer to Annapolis.—Congress appropriated $5,000 for transportation expenses from Southampton (where the Colonel died July 25, 1935). There are 108 models in the collection and 72 display cabinets. The models range from 6 inches to 6 feet in length, the average being 4 feet; some rigged ones are from 6 to 8 feet in height (to the main truck).
The bids for the transportation ranged from $8,000 to $13,500; so the Navy had to do the job. The New York Navy Yard undertook it and Captain E. H. Cope (S.C.), U. S. Navy, with an expert staff from his Department of 2 joiners, 2 packers, and 4 laborers, went to the Rogers’ home and completed the packing and crating part of the job in eighteen days. Mr. Fred Avery, a model maker from the J. J. Wenner Company of New York, was engaged to supervise the packing and crating. It was decided that some of the large exhibit cases and two of the large fully rigged models (with sails set) could be safely braced in the railway express cars.
How the packing was done.—In general the following plan was employed: Each model was removed from its respective cabinet (both tagged) and then secured by lashings (cotton lamp-wick, so as not to mar the fine finish on the sides of the model) to a specially prepared cradle with felt pads. This in turn was screwed to the bottom of a newly constructed shipping case made by the navy yard workmen. New lumber was used. This shipping case enclosed the entire model and protected it without the necessity of any additional precautions, the spars, rigging, etc., remaining as they were when first taken out of the cabinet. The shipping case was then carefully guarded so that it was always “right side up,” and thus not subjected to local jars or vibrations and only to those that were occasioned by the cars in transit. Some of the very small models and their cases were put in one large shipping case.
As thus planned there were 153 pieces for the express company to handle (reduced from a total of 108 models and 72 cases). These were loaded into navy yard trucks and brought into Southampton (5 miles) and loaded into two extra large, special fireproof express cars—one 62 and the other 74 feet long. All personnel then remained to guard them until the departure.
The trip to Annapolis.—The Railway Express Agency, making a special study of this shipment, arranged with the railroad companies for extra care to be taken to avoid jars and jerks in transit and while switching the cars at terminals. It was decided that a night trip was safer. Each express car, in charge of a representative of the express company, was attached to the rear of a passenger train—two trains being used so that all the eggs would not be in one basket. Mr. Avery accompanied the more valuable shipment. The trip was made in one night. Arriving in Annapolis the cars were unloaded in the city into Naval Academy trucks by the Academy personnel and the shipment was taken to Bancroft Hall, where it was placed in Memorial Hall and unpacked January 10, 1938. There was no damage and the total expense was less than $2,700.
What is an admiralty model?—Those who have viewed the colored frontispiece may have asked themselves why the ribs and underwater sections of the hull are exposed and why there is no rigging? The answer to the first question is that this allows a detailed inspection to be made of its construction, and to the second, that inasmuch as there were so few changes (relatively) from year to year in the rigging, the seagoing members of the Navy Board (admirals even though some of them might have been in the “gentlemen captains” class) did not consider it necessary for every model submitted to be rigged.
In the 1660’s when Samuel Pepys was Clerk of the Acts and a member of the Navy Board, there were no elaborate plans and blueprints such as we know, although there were drawings, sketches, and plans with dimensions also. But a skilled force of dockyard model makers was maintained to build these miniature ships to exact scale (generally one-quarter of an inch to the foot). These models were submitted so that the large ship it was proposed to build might be inspected in every detail. Sometimes the deck planking would be omitted, exposing the interior, so that inspections might be made of hatches, ladders, guns and gun carriage positions, magazines, mess rooms, yes, even to inlay or parquetry in the cabins. In addition, some of the best-known contemporary artists in the country would be called in to do the elaborate carvings on the sides, bow, and stern, which were often gayly painted, the decorations being of various colors but ^ore often in the finer models, gilded. The skilled artisans (and may we not now call them artists too?), the model makers, from the dockyards, would do the hull work and rigging. It would cost today’s magazine (of national circulation) a very large sum of money to reproduce in exact color some of the models in the Rogers collection with their gilded bows, sterns, and sides.
The preceding paragraphs explain why these particular models are termed “admiralty” models and why they may be classed as works of art.
Shipyards today employ model makers to make half models of the hull in order that the underwater lines as shown on the blueprints may be accurately “faired.” It is no longer necessary, however, to construct the large ship from the model by applying the scale directly from the model by methods of multiplying the various members of its construction.
Why the collection is so valuable and interesting.—What makes the Rogers collection so peculiarly valuable and interesting is that it contains so many noted original English admiralty models, but there is one of French nationality, a very fine example. Nearly every model and its large ship have interesting bits of history. These models date back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and no less than fourteen of them once belonged to the Cuckfield Park collection—the greatest private one in the world until broken; it had been kept intact in one family for 225 years. This collection was formed by Sir Charles Sergison (1654-1732) who followed the well-known diarist, Samuel Pepys (1633-1703), in the Navy Office, each having held positions as Clerk of the Acts followed by appointments as Secretary to the Admiralty. Eleven of the Rogers models from the Sergison collection date back to the seventeenth century.
One who studies the records of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century models in the Rogers collection and of their large ships will become well versed in European history, particularly that of the reigns of the two Charles Stuarts, and James II, William and Mary, and the great Queen Anne. Great figures are constantly appearing upon the scenes— figures in naval, military, and political life in England and upon the continent. (Different days, different times—the author has before him as this is written a list of Royal ships showing one of the Royal yachts of Charles II, H.M.S. Fubbs, named in honor of one of his favorite mistresses—her nickname.) It was a great pity that Pepys had to discontinue his Diary in 1669 due to his failing eyesight— his popularity and personal friendships with Royalty and all the great personages of the times, at home and abroad, gave him unusual opportunities to picture the life of the times in which he lived.
The ship models of Charles Sergison and Samuel Pepys, both great collectors, will be referred to later.
The oldest model in the Rogers collection dates back to the time of Oliver Cromwell but it is very badly worm-eaten and apparently there is no way to stop this deterioration.
In addition to the admiralty models, there are those (scaled and unsealed) of English, French, Dutch, Spanish, German, and American nationalities. Some are rigged and some are unrigged.
There are a number of very fine “bone models” which tradition says were made from the beef bones saved from their “rations” by the French naval prisoners while these man-of-war’s men (apt carvers from Brittany) were in Dartmoor prison.
Practically all the models are of the sailing-ship era, among them being ships of the line, frigates, sloops, brigs (there is one “brigantine which is unique for the late seventeenth century”), revenue cutters, Royal yachts, and pulling barges. In addition there is a fire ship and a galley cruiser (has “rowing ports” for oars to pursue the “slavers” when becalmed or in “light airs”); also East Indiamen, ships on launching ways, clippers (the Great Republic), and other types.
One of the models, the Royal Adelaide, rests upon launching ways which actually operate when the releasing gear is tripped and another (French) represents a ship on the ways ready for launching in a dockyard with all guns, spars, equipment, etc., laid out around the ways ready to be put aboard. The model of the frigate H.M.S. Shannon (successful opponent of U.S.S. Chesapeake) is here and was long in the family of Captain Sir Philip Broke.
All the models are most interesting but space prevents further enumeration here. Some day it is hoped a catalogue with illustrations may be got out, but Navy Departments and budget officers are niggardly with Museums—the money must all go for the fighting organizations. Perhaps a generous donor will supply the funds. (Under the recent act of Congress all gifts to the Secretary of the Navy for the Naval Academy Museum are exempt from all Federal taxes; for example, with an assumed net income of $500,000 and a gift of $75,000, the net cost to the donor is $21,000.)
Sailing ships of peace and of war.— Everyone seems interested these days in ships and the public’s interest in the Merchant Marine and in the Navy appears as great as at any previous time; and this is true in the other leading powers. Perhaps it is the romance and adventure inherent in the human race. It is from the Old Testament that we first learn from written records of “they that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters.” But ships go back even farther than Biblical history—back much farther than civilization itself—and ship models nearly as far, for they were known to have existed among the Egyptians long before the a.d. calendar.
Civilization of man did not come until his mate discovered Agriculture which she did while performing the drudgery around her skin-covered hut as her man hunted ceaselessly for food to keep them alive. When she learned the secret of the multiplicity of edible grains that could be harvested from selected seeds, man for the first time was enabled to gain a surplus of food. No longer in danger of immediate starvation man now had time for leisure and leisure gave him time for thought and reflection. It was in this manner that the arts began, the crude beginnings in modeling pottery, drawing and painting, music, and the fashioning of the metals. Architecture found expression in the crude forms of the arch, vault, and the dome— and even the “set back” style of Radio City was known to those who built the Tower of Babel! (One “set back” for each of the seven days of the week—that “mystic seven” of the ancients.)
Even before civilization began man knew of transportation by ships.
But the kind of civilization the reader of this article is living under today was largely determined by ships—by ships of peace and by ships of war. The former promoted trade and commerce among the various tribes and nations but the latter was the dominant factor, in that when the white races had been driven northward and westward on the continent of present- nay Europe, and all but pushed into the waters of the Atlantic, it was the ship of war that stemmed the tides of semibarbaric races from the East and Near East ever pressing on and on, and for these reasons we live today under a culture that is occidental rather than oriental. For the arts of Navigation and Seamanship, together with the guns of the ship, enabled the white man to outflank his enemies by the quick and easy passage around the Peninsula-like continent—through the surrounding waters of the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, the British Isles, Scandinavia, and the Baltic Sea—and to discover new worlds for the white man.
Ship models.—Henry B. Culver,3 writes in The Connoisseur (London! May, 1926, said:
Although ship models had been the quarry for many years, they first attained wide popularity in England during the opening years of the nineteenth century, a popularity undoubtedly inspired by the worship of England’s greatest naval hero, Horatio, Lord Nelson. The generation that Wed through the thrilling days of Trafalgar and Nelson’s funeral passed away, and with it popular interest in little ships, so that until a comparatively short time ago, few persons, except here and there an artist or some one with more or less of a definite connection with naval matters, evinced any particular interest in them.
About the beginning of the present century attention was again directed toward ship models and their collection and the interest has steadily increased.4 Again Quoting Mr. Culver:
The vogue for ship models was renewed. Old models were actively sought by collectors, reproductions in miniature of the ships of all ages and nationalities began to appear. Interest in ancient maritime matters, in naval prints and pictures, and in naval archaeology quickened. Societies devoted to the study of these subjects and associations of ship model collectors were formed in both Europe and in the United States. The ship model became a fad.
The grandfather of the late Colonel Rogers was a sea captain out of New Bedford (Massachusetts, U.S.A.). Probably the model Rogers regarded with the most affection is the New Bedford whaler built from data in an old log book and journal once the property of the grandfather. It is called Niger. The order for its construction was given to Mr. Culver, and Mr. Avery (now Museum model maker) spent a year working on it. Perhaps it was in the late Colonel’s blood—the lure of the sea and the love of ships and “little ships.” Although Rogers was long a member of the New York State National Guard, voluntarily seeking and obtaining special training in regular Army service schools and in those in France, and served with distinction in the A.E.F., nevertheless a ruling passion seems to have been the collecting of ship models.
His collection was started about twenty- odd years ago. Some of his purchases were from owners whose families had continuously owned them for over a century or from the time the models were first constructed. Some parted with them with great reluctance; others, feeling they could no longer keep them, preferred to sell them to a collector who they thought would keep them together eventually for the benefit of the public.
The collection was housed in a specially built museum room in his Southampton, Long Island, home known as “The Port of Missing Men.”5
Samuel Pepys and Sir Charles Sergison, previously referred to, did not possess all the important ship models by any means.
Sometimes a model would be given to some prominent civil official of the government or to some high ranking dockyard official or flag officer when it no longer served its purpose. In no case, however, in the old days, did the owners fully realize the value that was to be attached to them in later years. They were used mostly for decorative purposes in the fine homes of the period. From these sources were formed the smaller private collections. Tradition says that the collections of Pepys and Sergison were formed from the admiralty models when “they having served their utilitarian purposes, thereafter apparently lost all value as records in the estimation of the navy authorities, and may very well have been looked upon as perquisites by an official such as Pepys or Sergison. Their appropriations, therefore, were not deemed very venal acts in view of the general laxity with which government property seems to have been regarded at the time.”6 Quoting further from Culver we learn that
With few exceptions, it is rarely that one sees a concrete record in three dimensions [the italics are those of the present writer] of the development over a considerable period of time of any of the arts or crafts. It is, therefore, an almost unique occurrence that the United States, through the instrumentality of Colonel Rogers, has been made the repository of a complete chapter in the history of naval architecture, through the acquisition by him of the collection of ship models made by one of the foremost administrators of the British Navy during the last decade of the seventeenth and the first eighteen years of the eighteenth century.7
The debts we owe to Pepys and Sergison.— If the above can be said of Sergison’s administration, the same can be said, and even more emphatically, of his immediate predecessor’s, Samuel Pepys. As an author he has been known to countless readers since the Diaries were deciphered and published 113 years ago (1825) although they had been begun 278 years ago. It was our own Minister to Great Britain, James Russell Lowell, who said that Pepys “had written one of the most delightful books that it was man’s privilege to read in the English language or in any other.”
Pepys was one of the first great ship model collectors.8 The writer believes, even more strongly than does Mr. Culver who suggests it, that it was the collection of the great diarist that inspired Sergison to form his greatest private collections. Culver has this to say in this connection:
It is not astonishing, therefore, that he [Sergison] also followed Pepys’ example in forming a collection of ship models. There is no direct evidence that he ever saw the former’s gathering of miniature ships, but it is more than likely that he did so, and that he was probably inspired by it to possess one of his own.
If so, he was not unlike Pepys, for in the Diary under date of August 12, 1662, we find
Up early at my office, and, Mr. Deane, the Assistant of Woolwich, who I find will discover to me the whole abuse that his Majesty suffers in the measuring of timber, of which I shall be glad. He promises me also a modell of a ship, which will please me exceedingly, for I do want one of my own.
Pepys’ interest in the models never flagged and Mr. Deane “of Woolwich” seemed aware of his weakness for a later entry concerning Deane states: “ . . . and he and I spent all the afternoon finely, learning from him the method of drawing the lines of a ship, to my great satisfaction, and which is well worth my spending my time in, as I shall do when my wife is gone into the country.” (The author is reminded of the name of an old song of long ago.) She was more reluctant a year or so later to trust him alone in London when she went into the country.”9
The Rogers collection may contain some of the models once in the Pepys collection as there are a few unidentified admiralty ones of the period covered by the diarist's time at the Navy Office. Identification of these will entail long and careful research on the part of the staff of the Naval Academy Museum, and some day in the far distant future perhaps the antiquarians of things nautical, like those of today and for the past 130-odd years, who now write of Trafalgar and are digging up bits of Pepysiana every few years, will be writing of their attempts to identify the unidentified models in the Rogers collection.
In this connection The Honorable Secretary of the Society for Nautical Research (Sir Geoffrey Callender), in a letter a few months ago to the Naval Academy, very generously offered such of the resources at the command of the organizations with which he is associated, as will assist in the identification referred to above. Sir Geoffrey is also the Director of the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich and until a few years ago was Professor of History at the Royal Naval College.
Those who may be further interested in ship models of the admiralty type may make references to the articles and books of Mr. Henry B. Culver and to those of two other experts (English), Mr. R. C. Anderson and Mr. L. C. Carr Laughton. Articles by the three of them are frequently to be found in The Mariners’ Mirror, the quarterly journal of the S.N.R.10 of which Society Anderson and Laughton are Vice-Presidents.
From his very first year at the Navy Office Pepys seems to have been fascinated by ship models (this is borne out by the quotation below) and this continued right up to the last days of his life when he executed two codicils to his will concerning the disposition of his collection. He took advantage of every opportunity to learn all he could about ships from the ship models and he was invariably asking questions and in this way he soon learned all about equipage, ship construction, the Navy afloat and its establishments ashore; no one knew more about what was going on than he did. In the first year of the Diary (and it was his first at the Admiralty) we find this entry on October 4, 1660:
This morning I was busy looking over papers at the office all alone, and being visited by Lieut. Lambert of the Charles (to whom I was formerly beholden), I took him to a little ale house hard by our office,...
He is here referring to the voyage he made in the Royal Charles as secretary to his patron, the Earl of Sandwich, who commanded the fleet sent to Holland to bring back Charles II at the time of the Restoration. (The Earl was lost in the Royal George in 1672, according to the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, but the writer believes it was the Royal James. The model Royal George in the Rogers collection was of a later ship by this name.) Continuing the entry in the Diary it reads: .... After sitting awhile and drinking my two cozens, myself and Lieut. Lambert went by water to Whitehall,.. ., thence to my Lord’s11, where . . . , had some oysters, which were very good, the first I have eat this year; So back to my Lord’s to dinner, and after dinner Lieut. Lambert and I did look upon my Lord’s model, and he told me many things in a ship that I desire to understand. . . . , went home, .... At night to bed.
A short time after this he “found a modell of a fine ship, [in his office] which I long to know whether it be the King’s or Mr. Turner’s” (the latter a minor official at the Admiralty. If it belonged to the King, was he already thinking of taking it home?). From this time on he managed to have a model at the office and one at home and thus began the formation of his collection.
In his will he bequeathed it to a lifelong friend at the office, the wording (in one respect, reading much as did the will of the late Colonel Rogers) namely,
I give and bequeath to my executor, William Hewer, Esquire, my whole collection of Moddels of ships and other vessels standing in his house at Clapham where I now reside, recommending it to him to consider how these also together with his own may be preserved for the publick benefit.
The Rogers wording; “I hereby give and bequeath all my ship models wherever located ... to the United States Naval Academy,” the wish in this case also “for the publick benefit.”
These are the reasons (and it is admitted they are not direct bits of evidence) which convince the author that Sergison was inspired by the Pepys collection to form one of his own. The fact that the latter’s collection was kept intact for over two centuries was most fortunate for the United States and we owe a debt of gratitude to the enthusiasms of these two great collectors who indirectly and directly prepared the way for the late Colonel Rogers to obtain those choice possessions from the Cuckfield Park collection which have now come to Annapolis through the Colonel’s public-spirited and civic generosity.
Ship models “to beat the Dutch.”—The frontispiece shows the colored photographic reproduction of the late J. Seymour Lucas’ painting “A New Whip for the Dutch.”12 The title hints that a new whip might be necessary (warring with the Dutch seemed to have been a popular pastime with the English then). Whether or not the scene depicted in the painting antedates 1667 is unknown but the story of when the English did not “beat the Dutch” is a fascinating bit of history and as its aftermath revolves around ship models and the great value placed on them by possibly the greatest shipbuilder of the seventeenth century, Peter Pett,13 it is worth the space and time to tell it. Pett, at the time, was one of the civilian members of the Navy Board. His station was at the Royal Dockyard at Chatham. He was practically independent and had specially delegated authority from the Crown. Those who are critics of our navy- yard administration will be interested in this yarn—those who wish to ease our “sea lords” out of military command of the shore establishments. Chatham is on the Medway River near its mouth where its waters merge with those of the Thames to flow into the North Sea.
The story (story-book fashion) was in the month of June in the year 1667 and Charles II had been conducting for the Past two years one of those undeclared wars with the Dutch. We do not find in the one-volume English histories much about this incident of naval warfare—even the Encyclopaedia Britannica can spare it only slight space but does have three or four lines about it under the heading Dutch Wars.” The Dutch have not neglected it to be sure but the author prefers the local color that can best be gleaned from the quaint English of our friend Pepys it has a delicious flavor. Moreover it is worth the telling and probably the readers who delight in Pepys have overlooked the latter’s love of ship models, their interests having been centered upon certain of his other (?) activities. If the reader has heard this yarn . . . etc.
Charles II was sorely in need of ready cash and was hard up despite the fact that at the time of the Restoration he had been granted a large revenue of £1,300,000 and two years later (1662) sold secretly to Louis XIV the port of Dunkirk for £400,000. What to do?
Why Charles did what all in high places do--he turned first to economize on the national defense—this costs no political support. It seems to have been always popular to cry aloud that armaments breed War and of course everyone is against War.
This hastily sketched background will assist the reader better to enjoy the anecdote which resulted from this little-known naval action between the English and the Dutch.
The brother of Charles was the Duke of York, Lord High Admiral of England (later to become known as James II). Specie payments had been suspended; the enlisted men in the ships could not cash their pay warrants; dissatisfaction was rife throughout the service; the crews were refusing duty; worse, they were deserting and it was the time of the great mutinies. Even some of the best pilots had deserted and gone over to the Dutch. Nevertheless orders were issued to lay up the ships of the line and moor them in anchorages assigned at the mouths of the two rivers, the Thames and the Medway; defenses were improvised by placing obstacles in the river such as sinking old ships, running cables across the channels, stationing of the fire ships, and the driving of piling. The ships thus moored with skeleton crews for ship keepers were practically helpless and could only be moved to safer anchorages, if attacked, by using the small pulling boats to tow them; and this is a point for the reader to keep in mind. (In this “connexion,” as Pepys would write it, the word “carry” might be explained. As applied to a ship to “carry” the ship meant to move her.)
The protests of Pepys at the laying up of the ships had been in vain.
Such were the conditions when a startling event occurred!
News is suddenly received that the Dutch under Admiral de Ruyter are actually in the mouths of the two rivers and are attacking the English ships! Bad news indeed! “Rumours” (wrote Pepys) had preceded this attack, that the Dutch Admiral was at sea with “80 sail” and it seems rather remarkable that there were not others besides Pepys who were suspicious of the daring Dutch—since the deserting pilots flocked to Holland.
It is too late! The news is already old at Chatham, for the Dutch with the best English pilots aboard have entered the Medway and skillfully navigated the channel leading to the dockyard and successfully attacked the ships at anchor. Not only the pilots but English sailors have been fighting in the Dutch ships against their former shipmates!
It has all been most humiliating, for there has been no effectual means of fighting back and there were no small boats to tow the ships farther up the river—no time for it in fact—and the fire ships set adrift have proved ineffectual.
All of London is in a terrible panic for it is believed that the Dutch Admiral will come up the Thames now and take the capital. A portion of the populace actually flees the city. Even wise Samuel Pepys directs that his wife and father secretly bury his gold in the darkness of the night. Moreover he hides about his person all the gold he can safely manage (£300) in a money belt.
And this is the thirteenth day of June— lucky for the Dutch but Charles II does not seem over-disturbed if we are to believe what is quoted in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, that to allay the popular panic it is given out that the King “was very cheerful that night at supper with his mistresses.”
In the Diary under date of June 13 we find: “ . . . my neighbor, . . . tells me that he come from Chatham this evening at five o’clock, and saw this afternoon “The Royal James,” “Oak,” and “London” burnt by the enemy with their fireships: . . . ”14 A modern historian15 puts it this way: the Dutch “made prize of the glorious Royal Charles and burnt to the waterline three noble first rates, the Royal Oak, Loyal London and Royal James.”
It was to be nearly a century and a half later before the proud Englishman could feel with any degree of satisfaction the sentiments of the poet which later found expression in the lines
“Our ships were British oak,
And hearts of oak our men,”16
and they must have felt very badly— almost as badly as our own forbears did when Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane sailed up the Chesapeake to the near-by waters of the Patuxent River and marched his forces overland to burn the Capitol and White House. In its account of the War of 1812 the Encyclopaedia Britannica says “some authorities admit it was an act of vandalism” and it makes a further restrained observation that the account of this war by the historian Theodore Roosevelt “is lively and somewhat passionate, and not free from prejudice.”17
When it was found that the Dutch were not going to take London there was the usual loud outcry—a scapegoat was demanded and a Parliamentary investigation was ordered but the Admiralty was quick to see the advantage of doing its own investigating first. Perhaps poor Pepys, being a civilian member of the Navy Board, is not without fears that he might be chosen, so he goes diligently to work to prepare the defense and we find this entry:
June 19th. Up, and to the office, where all the morning busy. ... At noon comes Sir W. Batten and [Sir] W. Pen,18. . . and by and by comes an order from Sir Robert Browne, commanding me this afternoon to attend the Council-board, with all my books and papers touching the Medway. I was ready [to fear] some mischief to myself, though it appears most reasonable that it is to inform them about Commissioner Pett. I eat a little bit in haste at Sir W. Batten’s, without Much comfort, being fearful, though I shew it not, and to my office and get some papers, and .und out the most material letters and orders M our books, and so took coach to the Council- chamber lobby, where I met Mr. Evelyn, who do Miserably decry our follies that bring all this Misery upon us.19
Pepys guessed it as the reader probably has. Peter Pett, “Peter the Great” as Sir Geoffrey Callender affectionately calls him, had been selected. In fact he had already been thrown into the Tower on a charge of “dangerous practices and misdemeanours” (June 14). This meek man of science, who owed his position to no politician, took his arrest resignedly but he was brokenhearted and the shock hastened his death. He had carried out to the letter all the orders issued by the Board for the defense of the ships and the station under his charge at Chatham— and now this! We will soon note his dejected appearance when brought before the Commissioners.
Even if Pepys did have a kind of nervous indigestion and found his food tasteless (though he “shew it not”) he was not inclined to take it lying down. So he carefully brushes up his hair and puts on his best raiment, and, gathering up his books and papers which contain the “defense,” he strides forth to the Council chamber with an outward show of boldness that he does not feel within. He has not neglected, however, to provide for the contingency which is in the back of his mind, for he takes the precaution to inform a friend just what to do should he be seen taken from the chamber a prisoner and thrown into the Tower. Continuing, our faithful friend who writes down everything (not even failing to note his amours) says:
And after Sir W. Coventry’s telling them what orders His Royal Highness had made for the safety of the Medway, I told them to their full content what we had done, and showed them our letters. Then was Peter Pett called in, with the Lieutenant of the Tower. He is in his old clothes, and looked most sillily. His charge was chiefly the not carrying up of the great ships, and the using of the boats in carrying away his goods; to which he answered very sillily, though his faults to me seem only great omissions. Lord Arlington and Coventry very severe against him; the former saying that, if he was not guilty, the world would think them all guilty. The latter urged, that there must be some faults, and that the Admiral must be found to have done his part. I did say an unhappy word, which I was sorry for, when he complained of want of oares for the boats: and there was, it seems, enough, and good enough, to carry away all the boats with from the King’s occasions. He said he used never a boat till they were all gone but one; and that was to carry away things of great value, and these were his models of ships; [the italics are those of the present writer] which, when the Council, some of them, had said they wished that the Dutch had had them instead of the King’s ships, he answered, he did believe the Dutch would have made more advantage of the models than of the ships, and that the King had had greater loss thereby; this they all laughed at. After having heard him for an hour or more, they bid him withdraw. I all this while showing him no respect, but rather against him, for which God forgive me! for I mean no hurt to him, but only find that these Lords are upon their own purgation, and it is necessary I should be so in behalf of the office.
The plural “occasions” as used by Pepys above is now obsolete; it then meant “needs.”
There we have it! Ship models were more important than these ships of the King! And Time has vindicated Peter in this particular incident and he stands before the bar of history in a much better light than those who “laughed at” him— he has had the last laugh.
The loss is not irreparable, thinks Peter. The models are safe—he can build his King new ships—and he thinks that the Dutch could make much better use of the models than of the ships—so it is better the way it has turned out. Pett probably has in mind also that it is common knowledge that the English have the best ships afloat—and that it is better to maintain this supremacy by removing the models to safety.
As these thoughts were running through Peter’s mind, others altogether different were running simultaneously through the minds of their Lordships the Commissioners of the Admiralty—they were amused at Peter’s naiveté—his models more important than the King’s ships of the line? indeed!—and now they had him, for had he not convicted himself out of his own mouth?20
Little did these Commissioners realize that there in their midst was the greatest shorthand reporter the world has ever known and that some day the entire world would be able to read a full account of when they were “upon their own purgation” bent and in a day when “purges” is a familiar word to readers the world over. We must now leave this delightful account from the Diaries but perhaps a moral may be drawn from the whole “affaire Medway,” when Charles II and his Navy did not “beat the Dutch.” If so it would be this: From the days of Helen and the Trojan horse, down to and including these days of undeclared wars it has always been the unholy, the unwary, and the unprepared who have been the hapless and unhappy victims. The lesson is soon forgotten and they never seem to learn. Truly history is said to repeat itself for very good reasons—as the Chinese have found out to their sorrow from the days of Genghis Khan to modern times.
The visitations of the Black Plague and of the Great Fire of London had taken place the year before (1666) and now it must have seemed to England’s stricken people that this fresh disaster was a further proof that God’s wrath had not yet been sufficiently appeased—that His punishments of them for living in “one of the most dissolute and flagrant periods in history” were not at an end.
Conclusion.—There may be hopes in England that by means of what are known as “equitable exchanges” several of these models may some day return permanently to England. This sentimental viewpoint must be respected for it is known that there were some misgivings in that country when Colonel Rogers purchased the cream of the Cuckfield Park collection from the Sergison heirs and other ship models in the collections of those who treasured them, as only those could, whose families had had them for over a century. But there were others, who, forced to part with them, were willing to do so, feeling that the Colonel’s love of the “little ships” would keep them out of the hands of dealers, thereby preventing that endless passing to and fro which so often becomes the fate of treasured art objects when they have finally passed out of the hands that have so long cared for them.
But there are other points of view and the writer wishes to take the opportunity here presented to state them.
In the first place the writer knows of no way in which they could possibly be returned or exchanged permanently without an Act of Congress as they are now the Property of the United States.
In the second place there are legal questions which involve the validity of Colonel Rogers’ will respecting them should the collection not be kept intact.
But there is another side concerning admiralty models which appeals particularly to this writer and this is sentimental too.
At the time these models were made, the inhabitants of the American colonies were perfectly good and loyal subjects of England. And we are their descendants, it follows then that the English Navy, rom the times of the two Charles Stuarts, through the reigns of James II, William and Mary, Anne, and up to the times of George the Third, was our Navy too. If sentiment should govern then the scales are balanced.
The historians of Annapolis and Maryland have always marked the date 1649 as a milestone (the very same year that Charles I lost his head—literally), for it was in that year that there gathered at the mouth of the Severn River21 that hardy band of settlers who made themselves so strong (and perhaps so vociferous too) that almost any prophet of the times could have foretold that on this site was to be the future capital of the Province of Maryland.
Sixty years after the first settlers established their capital at St. Mary’s City (1634) the capital was removed to the settlement, now grown to a town, on the banks of the Severn, and was given then the final name of Annapolis, after the heir-apparent, the Princess Anne.22 This is the same Anne, the granddaughter of Henrietta Maria and of Charles I, who almost immediately ascended the throne and began her rule over “one of the most glorious periods in English history” and became known as the great Queen Anne.
Today in Annapolis there are two oil portraits of Henrietta Maria which hang upon walls historic to America’s early struggles to establish a government of free men—one of them and a masterpiece23 is in the State House where the Treaty of Peace was signed which ended the Revolutionary War, the same State House wherein Washington24 resigned his commission as Commander in Chief and retired to private life at Mount Vernon— and the other portrait is in the recently restored Government House, the official residence of the Governor of Maryland, which harmonizes so beautifully and architecturally with its colonial surroundings.
And if the above be not sufficient historical links to prove our heritage to the Navy of England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when these ship models were built for it, perhaps the past and the present may be bridged when it is noted that these two portraits are within less than a stone’s throw of St. Anne’s25 churchyard, wherein was finally laid to rest the mortal remains of the last Royal Governor of the Province of Maryland, Sir Robert Eden. Sir Robert, popular, beloved, and respected up to the time of the Revolution, was forced to flee Annapolis in an English man-of-war (1776). This is the same Eden for whom streets and villages are named in localities so widely separated as Maryland and North Carolina—the same Eden who was the great- great-great grandfather of that brilliant and distinguished young diplomat, the former British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden.
And furthermore, the State of Maryland in which these models now repose, was named after the Queen of Charles I, Henrietta Maria.
Those who desire to search further for common historical associations linking the English-speaking peoples will please note that the two museums which are now the final repositories of so many important English Admiralty models are in establishments closely linked with the name of this same Queen; that of the Naval Academy in the state of Maryland and that of the National Maritime Museum in the “Queen’s House” also named in honor of Henrietta Maria.
And now may her granddaughter’s namesake city by the Severn be the last and happy haven for these “little ships” of old England—and may they bring pleasure and inspiration for many a year to all those who love the “large ships” and the seas they sail upon.
Serene I fold my arms and wait,
Nor care for wind, or tide, or sea:
I rave no more ’gainst time or fate,
For lo! my own shall come to me.
The stars come nightly to the sky;
The tidal wave unto the sea;
Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high
Can keep my own away from me.—
John Burroughs, “Waiting”
***************
Whether the science which we so much aim at, and some of us pretend to, in Naval Architecture, do or can amount to more than to direct us to such a body, (i.e. . . . underwater form) as shall best answer the uses first proposed and circumstanced, so as to sail and work best, and this to be obtained in one only posture; there being no one shape equally good or bad in every posture or trim.
The accidental changes in ships as to their sailing better or worse upon very slight occasions, shewing how little we receive from the art originally employed in her building, viz: as\ to the constant good sailing of a ship, and that, to speak the most in fewest words, all seems to lie in this small room, viz: the greatest length joined with the least breadth in such manner as may best consist with the answering of all the uses desired.
But shewing that the truth of shipbuilding does not lie in the niceness of lines but accommodating of the shape to so as best lo take in all the variety of uses and qualities we are led to desire in a ship.—Samuel Pepys, Naval Minutes of 1683.
1 In the probate of the Colonel’s will a decision was handed down that these and the other cases (some of them reproductions of Sheratons and Chippendales) were a part of the (Southampton) house proper and therefore were the property of the widow to whom the house had been left. In 1937 the widow (now Mrs. Walter Hoving) in a most gracious letter to the Superintendent (Admiral Sellers) expressed the wish that all the cases go to the Naval Academy. Her generous action was most appreciated and these valuable cases were accepted. (See illustrations of the antique cabinets pp. 1548-49.) Of the eleven contemporary glass display cabinets two are “Queen Anne,” eight are “William and Mary,” and one “Chippendale.”
2 Stipulations of the will were: To provide: (a) a suitable place to display the collection; (b) for its repair and upkeep; and (c) for a competent expert at an adequate salary for its repair and upkeep (and Congress appropriates $2,000 annually for the material upkeep in addition to the salary of the model maker.)
3 The greatest American authority on ship models whose knowledge of the Rogers collection commands great respect abroad.
4 The interest of our Commander in Chief, President Roosevelt, in these matters is well known.
5 Gossip says that the Colonel’s hunting lodge previously occupied this site and that it was here that his stag friends were put up during the hunting season. As the latter’s women folks were wont to go along on these occasions they had to remain in the more prosaic village of Southampton until the shooting was over. When questioned as to the whereabouts of their husbands the reply usually was: “Oh, out at the port of missing men.”
6 Their public services at the Admiralty covered the years 1660 to 1718, Pepys serving from 1660 to 1689 and the latter from then on. The office held by them was charged with the purchases of supplies of all kinds and the award of contracts was fraught with temptations.
7 Sir Charles Sergison. (This footnote is by the present writer.)
8 See the index volume to the Wheatley Edition of the Diaries for all the references to Pepys’ interest in ships and ship models.
9 The former Chief Constructor of the U. S. Navy, avid w. Taylor, built our first ship model basin at the Washington Navy Yard years ago. He testified as the expert witness before the Admiralty Court in the celebrated case of the collision between the SS. Olympic and one of H.M. cruisers while nearing Southampton. Our Navy is constructing the $3,500,000 David W. Taylor model basin. It is interesting to note that Pepys’ friend, Mr. Deane, seems to have been the first to employ a ship model to foretell a ship’s future performance. From the Diaries under date of May 19, 1666, We read: “And then he fell to explain to me his manner casting the draught of water which a ship will draw before-hand: which is a secret the King and all admire m him; and he is the first that hath come to any certainty before-hand of foretelling the draught of water a ship before she is launched.”
10 The Society for Nautical Research—the British fondness for abbreviations. We have been gradually acquiring the habit since the World War and perhaps have already excelled them.
11 The Lord was his patron and first cousin once removed who obtained Pepys’ first position at the Admiralty. He was created the first Earl of Sandwich (1660). His title so well known today was not due to a distinguished naval career. Captain Cook upon the discovery of those islands where the U. S. Navy now has its mid-Pacific operating base named them the Sandwich Islands in honor of this Earl’s grandson.
12 Three ship models in the Rogers collection (one the Royal George) were purchased from the collection of Seymour Lucas in 1921; a fourth and important one was obtained from his estate in 1923 after his death.
13 Phineas Pett (father of Sir Peter Pett and both from a long line of famous Royal shipbuilders) was commanded by Charles I to build the largest ship in the world (and this kept secret from even the Navy Board for a time). Peter assisted the father in building the Sovereign of the Seas launched in 1637 of 1637 tons. Naval officers when they heard of her great size wagged their heads (we are a conservative lot) and said she was too big to maneuver and fight the guns! This was a big advance in tonnage and there was no material increase in the size of ships for the next two centuries—the ships at Trafalgar were not over 2,000 tons.
14 Note the illustration of the fire-ship model and of the Dutch in the Medway, pp. 1546-47.
15 Since submitting this article to the Naval Institute the author has been privileged to read the most fascinating account of this attack by Sir Geoffrey Callender in his The Portrait of Peter Pelt and the Sovereign of the Seas, published by the S.N.R., for its members, with the compliments of the Honorary Vice-President, Sir James Caird.
The National Maritime Museum was finally established by the S.N.R. a few years ago in the palace known as the “Queen’s House” when the naval medical staff relinquished it, having held on to it for over a century (since the time the crown turned it over for the hospitalization of the sick and wounded sailors during the wars towards the end of the eighteenth century). The “Queen’s House” was begun by James I for Anne of Denmark in 1606-7 and completed by Charles I and named for his queen, Henrietta Maria, the French lassie whom he first married by proxy. It was the S.N.R. (organized in 1910) which not only succeeded in establishing the National Maritime Museum but also in another of its main objectives, the restoration of Nelson’s flagship, the Victory. Among the Presidents of the S.N.R. have been the Prince of Battenberg (its first one), Admiral of the Fleet Sir F. C. Doveton Sturdee, Bart., and Admiral of the Fleet The Earl Beatty, G.C.B.
[1]6 S. J. Arnold’s Death of Nelson.
[1]7 The author does not believe this mild irony will be offensive when it is recalled that the burning of the Capitol was supposed to be in retaliation for the conduct of our forces in entering the House of Parliament at York at the time they carried away the English Royal Standard (now at the Naval Academy) and the mace. At the graduating exercises at Annapolis last June President Roosevelt said, “And now we have a very pleasant surprise. A number of years ago our close neighbor on the north, the government of our sister- nation, Canada, sent back to the United States flags which had been captured by Canadian and British soldiers in the War of 1812, and shortly after that the government of the United States sent back to Canada the mace of the Canadian Parliament which American soldiers and sailors had taken during the War of 1812.” This was the introduction of the Mayor of St. John, New Brunswick, Canada, who then presented to the President and through him “to the great American nation, the octant used by that famed officer of your early life as a nation and as a power upon the waters, Commodore John Paul Jones, the father of the American nation.” The President replied: “On behalf of the government and especially on behalf of all the graduates of the United States Naval Academy, I extend our very deep thanks to my neighbor, Mayor MacLaren of St. John, for this trophy that fits in so well in this historic spot.”
18 W. Pen (as Pepys spells it) was Admiral William Penn, a Navy Commissioner without portfolio. He was the father of him whose statue is atop Philadelphia’s City Hall. Batten, another Commissioner, was the Surveyor. Sir George Carteret ("vice admiral of Jersey”) for whom New Jersey (U.S.A.) was named, was Treasurer and Chairman of the Board.
[1]9 Evelyn was a famous contemporary diarist though of course neither he nor any one else knew Pepys was a diarist. The two were very good friends and corresponded with one another.
20 It did not occur to any one, says Callender, until the reign of Queen Anne to place a naval officer (of the line) in command of the Royal dockyards. From this latter time, however, no civilian has been placed in charge of a dockyard, even though he be, as Pett was, a Navy Commissioner. An officer of the line has likewise been in command of the U. S. naval yards and stations, despite the efforts which have been made from time to time to replace them by staff officers who never go to sea.
21 Little did Captain John Smith, the first white man to sight the mouth of the Severn River, realize that some day an institution would arise upon the banks of the Severn for the training of naval officers to man a fleet that would equal that of England’s; nor could he have realized that here was to be the final haven of those “little ships” which lacked but a few years of being contemporary with those “large ships” with which he was so familiar. He was here in 1608.
22 Princess Anne contributed £400 for “books to be circulated among the Maryland clergy.” Of the 1095 such volumes 398 are now the property of St. John’s College, Annapolis. (W. Norris, Annapolis—Its Colonial and Naval Story—1925.)
23 This portrait was painted in 1632 by Daniel Mytens who “was a Dutch contemporary of Van Dyck and the latter’s predecessor as Court Painter to Charles the First.” It is insured by the State of Maryland for $100,000.
24 “During the frequent visits [of Washington] to Annapolis, Md., he attended the services conducted by the Rev. Jonathan Boucher, who was a tutor for a time to Jackie Custis” (Authority: Page 161, Volume III, Literature Series, United States George Washington Bicentennial Celebration). This recent discovery thus permits the parishioners of St. Anne’s to join that proud and select circle of Virginia worshipers who attend services at Christ Church, Alexandria, and at Pohick Church.
25 The body of Sir Robert Eden buried in the all but forgotten sanctuary of old St. Margaret’s, near Annapolis, was located and reinterred in St. Anne’s churchyard in June, 1926, under the auspices of the Society of Colonial Wars. It may be of interest to note that the President of this Society at the time (and also Speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates) was a direct descendant of Lieutenant John Trippe who so distinguished himself during the bombardment of Tripoli by Commodore Preble’s Squadron in 1804. The descendant, the late Mr. John McC. Trippe, of Baltimore, directed that his forbear’s Congressional medal be presented to the Naval Academy Museum, which was done a few months ago by his wife and daughter.
St. Anne’s (Protestant Episcopal) still has the communion silver presented by William III in 1695, whose arms may be observed on them.