Polly Cornthwaite
Senior Cataloguer
Lot 126AR
Montague Dawson(British, 1890-1973)H.M. Armed Schooner Pickle
25 – 26 October 2022, 14:00 BST
London, KnightsbridgeSold for £20,400 inc. premium
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Rhyanon Demery
Head of Sale
Montague Dawson (British, 1890-1973)
H.M. Armed Schooner Pickle cracking along under full sail, heading home with the glorious news of Trafalgar but tempered by the death of Lord Nelson
signed 'MONTAGUE DAWSON' (lower left)
oil on canvas board
50.1 x 60.4cm (19 3/4 x 23 3/4in).
signed 'MONTAGUE DAWSON' (lower left)
oil on canvas board
50.1 x 60.4cm (19 3/4 x 23 3/4in).
Footnotes
Provenance
With Frost and Reed, London, no. 44377 (acquired directly from the artist).
Private collection, UK (purchased from the above for £3,000 in April 1969), thence by descent to the current owner.
H.M. Armed Schooner Pickle was built in 1799, most probably in Chesapeake Bay, and originally named Sting. Purchased at Curacao by Admiral Lord Seymour, C. in C. at Jamaica, for use as a tender to his flagship Sans Pareil, she had returned to European waters and assumed her role as a fleet messenger under the new name of Pickle by the time the campaign culminating in Trafalgar got underway. Measured at 126 tons, she was 73 feet in length with a 21 foot beam and carried an armament of 12 or 18-pounders (accounts vary). Undoubtedly fast, as evidenced by her 1000-mile dash from Cape Trafalgar to Falmouth in only eight days, she was the logical choice for Admiral Collingwood to send his dispatch containing the momentous news of the great victory at Trafalgar tempered by the tragic news of the Nelson's death in battle as quickly as possible and this fact presumably outweighed his seemingly strange choice of such a relatively junior officer to carry it. Pickle's career after her sudden elevation to fame in 1805 proved short-lived, however, and she was wrecked off Cadiz on 27th July 1808.