15S 
Figureheads and Quarterboards. 
BY CHARLES G. DAVIS. 
In ancient times sailors used to paint eyes on the bows 
of their boats, being superstitious enough to believe that 
the boat could then see her way safely home when storms 
drove them off shore out of sight of land or when night 
prevented human eyes from seeing the land. 
Some put images of the saints on the stem or head, as 
the forward part of the boats were called, and imagined 
to that little wooden saint was due all the credit of 
safely arriving in their home port when storms beset 
In times of real peril they would fall on their knees 
and pray to the little wooden god, whose painted eyes 
stared steadily ahead, no matter how fierce the Storm, to 
bring them safely home. 
Through ages the idea that the bow of a vessel is the 
thead and entitled to due respect has survived, and while 
flio modern sailor would think of praying to the wooden 
images of Stonewall Jackson or like figures that adorned 
the stems of modern clippers named after such notorious 
men as Jackson and others, yet the shipbuilder, up to a 
few j'ears ago, would not think of sending out a ship 
without this eye-pleasing relic of barbarism. 
Stj'les of ornaments changed with the times, and while 
ship^ Hike the Great Harry and La Tenible had frills 
CCDAVJS. 
and scrollwork enough around the bow to load a sloop 
with and three or four balconies and rows of glass win- 
dows with coats of arms and gilt scrolls galore around 
the stern, we now have four-masted steel ships with prac- 
tically no scroll work or anything to relieve the barren 
Iblack sides but a small name and hailing port in white or 
;gold. 
Foreign shipbuilders clung to the carved images of 
women, cherubs and men as a figurehead long after the 
American builders discarded all but floral scrolls. 
A number of years ago I made quite a study of the 
figureheads on ships, and it was then I noticed that Amen- 
itiac ships used but few images, while I got many a good 
photograph of English, Danish, Spanish and Norwegian 
ships with figures of women, etc. One old Danish bark 
in particular I remember had the images of Raphael's 
cherubs with their elbows leaning on the stock of an 
anchor. 
With yachts the ornamenting of the bows in an appro- 
priate and at the same time artistic manner is a much 
more difficult problem. 
The Aphrodite, for instance, a photo of whose head 
is reproduced here, seems to be rather overdone. Th|e 
figure of the woman is too far out on the stem and the 
pose is not as graceful as the women shown on the ships' 
pows in the smaller photos. 
The other photo sljp^? f^i a CbeaapesJce Buc^- 
FOREST. AND STREAM. 
eye yacht that I ran across at South Brooklyn. The fly- 
ing eagle on the tip is well rendered, but the vine work 
following should trail as if flowing from the for'd end; 
as they are they appear curling up against the wind. 
The three flying ducks, p"ortrait of the owner and his 
private signal are a bit of personal conceit, yet the whole 
is so well rendered as to leave a pleasing impression after 
all. The page of numbered sketches are part of a collec- 
tion extending over some twelve years. I have in my pos- 
session a box nick-named my bank that I have had since 
I was a school boy, and that contains hundreds of little 
sketches, nine-tenths of which pertain to boats and yachts. 
These scrolls are culled from the bank : 
No. I. Is the trail boards on the bow of the schooner 
yacht Shamrock. We were on the old cutter Pelican 
on a cruise to Marion, Mass., from City Island and 
stopped for a few days at New London, when the 
schooner came in and anchored near us. The Shamrock 
originally was a sloop designed by J. Rogers Maxwell 
with some assistance from Mr. H. C. Wintringham, naval 
architect, and built by Mumm at Bay Ridge in 1887. She 
[Feb. 21, 1903. 
was altered to a schooner In iSg^J. + . 1 ■ 
The sefoU is Symbolic of her name, with its Irish harp 
surrounded with sprays of shamrock forming the main 
ornament in the scroll. 
No. 2. Is a chance sketch that I ran across on City 
Island of an old delapidated smack, whose head, how- 
ever, has been preserved, though the rest of the hull is 
Ludly stove up. 
There is no gilded scroll work here; the chicken's head 
was sawed oitt of Ah, Inch plank and t\V,o big while fe^eS 
with black dots in the center gave sight and therefore 
intelligence to this homely craft. 
No. 3. Is the bow of the steel American-built steam 
yacht El Reba, designed by the firm of Tams & Lemoine, 
yacht designers and brokers. The shield and tip end make 
a very pretty profile followed by a trailing scroll that 
harmonizes nicely. 
No. 4. Her stern only has a. dolphin to relieve the plain 
ribband line. Her Stern is principally reraatkable .for the 
double cheek aJjpeEirance caused h'y thte outer butttick 
hnes being lower than the center line of the stern. 
No. 5. I sketched at the yard of Frank Wood, on City 
Island, and shows some of "Charlie" Brown's famous 
carving. Figurehead carving is his business. This speci- 
men was carved on the bow of the sloop yacht Manito, 
designed .by Wm. Gardner for Mr. Charlie Loundes, of 
Charleston, S. C, who died, poor fellow, soon after the 
yacht was taken south. Her gold stripe line ended fot' 
ward in a spear head. It illustrates Cutting its Way ahead; 
v.hile aft No. 6 trailed out in a series of leaves. 
The sterns in nearly all of these sketches were drawn 
as I stood below them looking up, which will explain the 
shape in which they appear to the eye. 
No. 7. Is a very simple scroll that was on a model in a 
designer's office where I once worked. 
No. 8. I was struck by the fierce looking face that was 
worked into the ornamentation at the forward end of the 
scroll forming a series of imitation windows around the 
box-like stern of the high speed steam launch Feiseen, 
designed by Gardner & Mosher and built by Frank Wood 
at City Island. She was an extreme racing model very 
lightly built, double planked with mahogany outer Sheath- 
ing and full of light, powerful machinery. She was sold 
to Mexico for a dispatch and torpedo boat, and they say 
the natives down there started her up one day and she got 
running so fast the engineers lost their heads and bolted 
from the engine room, where the light but powerful en- 
gines were fairly humm.ing, they were revolving so fast, 
and all hands hung on to the railing on deck shouting 
through the megaphone as they dashed about the harbor 
among the shipping, to the various ships they passed : 
"Send a boat ! Send a boat and stop us !" and that, when 
the Feiseen was shooting half her length nearly out of 
water and going 26 knots an hour, "Send a boat and stop 
us!" No wonder the seamali remarked, "Crazy niggers," 
for who Could catch such a whirlwind to stop her. AM 
they had to do was turn oi¥ the steam, but this there 
wasr^'t a man aboard would dare to do. So, in sheer des- 
peration, they headed her straight for the shelving beach. 
They say she slid her whole length out of water and 
stayed there, a haunted monster, while the "niggers" took 
to their heels. Such is the story that I was told. 
No. 9. Is a decided departure from the Conventional 
rules for bow ornamentation. Baylies, of City Island, 
built this yawl, named the Veery, from the designs of 
Mt. Henry Gielow, naval architect. She had considerable 
freeboard, and it may be this scroll was introduced to try 
and reduce the apparent height. 
No. II. Shows the Veery's stern ornament, as odd in its 
design as the bow. 
No. 12. Is the bow scroll of the 34 rater Dragoon, 
owned by Mr. F. M. Freeman. Capt. T .R. Webber, of 
New Rochelle, designed and built the Dragoon and also 
carved the ornamentation on her. This scroll is full of 
j'leasant memories to me, as I used to race the old 
Dragoon, and as an ending to her eventful career I 
sailed her from New York to Savannah. 
No. 13. Is the scroll on her transom which I sketched 
when she was laid up one winter. Her competitors will 
