Bismarck weekly tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1884-1943, 1890-08-15
%FIGUREHEAD LORE.
SIGNIFICANCE ATTACHED TO THE,
EMBLEMS BY SAILORS. -

VI course IL was only by way or a nn1Sh
off just to improve her appearance that
the stem of Prince George of Wales little
ship, the Thrush, recently received the dec
Grafton of a tigurehead of the approved
shield and scroll work pattern, which is
nowadays "the thing'' in the navy. When
first designated as Prince Georges ship,
the Thrush, like the other vessels of her
rate, bore nothing whatever on her plain
cutwatcr. Nobody would dream of our
enlightened Jacks of the present year of
~grace-any A. B. of whom could, in the
way of general attachments, "give points,
to all the port admirals in England in Mel
sons day-attaching any significance to
the possession of a Ggurehead. 1t was not
always SO, however, certainly not in
eighteen hundred and war time" II
never knew u vessel with a fiddle head do
anything" one of .Marryat's old salts, the
gunner of the Rattlesnakc, is made to tell
Peter Simple. Indifference to which super
stition we learn that the Rattlesnake's
tiddlehead-a plain, unadorned v%ol,ltetype
of head rounding off the top of the ships
cut WATERWAYS forthwith replaced by q
igurehead made wich the help of Il coil of
rope and u cleft block of wood, emblamatic
of the ships name. There are several cases
noted by Capt. Basil Hall and others of
our Jacks showing Il semi-superstitious
regard for the tigurehead Of their ship, as
though it were u sort of tutelary deity. AS,
for instance, by their decking it out when
in chase of an enemy with necklets of treas
ured odds and ends hunted up for the occa-
sion from their kit bags, and coaNing it
in terms of endearmcnt and with promises
of extra coats of paint to hasten the good
ship on.
In pthar 1xnvc Tho frr,robaoI Loe ,lDy,J
a part in naval story.
TIL FIGUREHEAD IN NAVAL STORY.
Marryat's yarn of how the ships COM
pany of the Rattlesnake cut off the head
and rattle from the e1figy Peter Simple had
provided for the vessels fgurehead, after
their commander, the cowardly Capt.
Hawkins, had made the ship show her
stern to an enemy who was her fair match,
has an historical basis. So has the story
of how the men of the old Brunswick at
the battle of the GLORIOUS First of June"
sent a de%putation to the quarterback in the
heat of the fight to borrow from the cap
tain a cooked hat to replace the wooden
cooked hat shot away off the head of the
effigy of the Duke of Brunswick that did
duty as the fgurehead of the ship. The
men on getting "the best gold laced hat
the captain had" nailed it on the figure
| head, where it remained for the rest of the
day.
The French %privateer Surcouf again, the
terror of the Indian seas in the Napoleon
war, is said to have apostrophised the fig
urehead in his famous cruiser, the Reve-
nant, which represented q corpse in the
act of casting off it's shroud, in the famous
address he made to his crew on first put
ting to sea-: "This ship shall be our tomb
or cradle of future glory!" Similarly there
was much meaning in the grewsome figure
head-a skeleton-which the famous En-
glish privateer ship Terrible bore. Accord
ing to the old ballad the Terrible sailed
from Execution dock on a Friday in No
vember, 1857, with Capt. Death, First
Lieut.. Devil and Surgeon Ghost on board,
to fight as bloody a sea duel as any on rec
ord in the West Indies with the French
privateer Vengeance on another Friday.
Nor ought mention to be omitted Of the
rather too realistic flgurehead of the sloop-
of-war Pearl, of George 1I's navy, the
shaggy, frowning head of the famous buc-
cancer Blackboard, as struck off his dead
body, with which CHASTITY trophy as a fig
urehead Lieut.. Maynard adorned his YES
sells bow as he sailed into Port Royal
after his victory over the redoubtable pi-
rate.
One of Basil Halls post captains once
found his ships tigurehead useful as u
lever with which to work up the energies
of his men. The frigate boosted a gilded
fgurehead which was literally the idol of
the crew. One day, when sailing in COM
pany with other ocean high flyers of the
same class, she had been beaten at reeting
topsails. Upon the commodore signaling
that the squadron should repeat the exer-
else the captain of the frigate in question
hailed his men who were aloft with: "Now,
l tell you what it is, my lads, unless you
are OFT those yards n the sails are hoisted
again before any other ship in the squad
ron, by the Lord Harry I'll paint your fig
urehead black!' The result vas that from
that time forward the frigate beat every
other ship on the station at all drifts aloft.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE F~IGUREHEAD.
There is much that is curious about the
development of the figurehead through the
various forms that at one time or another
it has assumed. The learned date it's orr
gin to the primnval times-to the days
when mans only method of getting to the
other side of any piece of open water was
to prOpel himself across astride Of the near
est fallen tree trunk Antiquaries profess
to find the first idea Of the figurehead in
the grim and grotesque face resemblances
that would be left in the preliminary trim
ming of the roots of the tree trunk, which
would be necessary to make it float head
first. Whether this was SO or not in pre-
historic ages does not, however, much
matter.
F~igureheads in the earliest historic times
seem to have been sacred emblelns borne
on board ship to insure good luck and avert
the perils of the sea. Egyptian sculptures
give numerous representations of vessels
with heads of the sacred ram of Ammon,
or Ibis heads at the prov, and we read that
images representing the mystic Cabiri-
divinities who had special power of pro-
tecting their worshipers from storm and
wreck-were similarly made use of by the
Phoenician mariners. A bough cut from
the sacred spreading oak that ruled in Do
dona's tagged grove" according to ancient
myth, did duty as figurehead for Jason's
Argo ship, and was of no trivial account,
the learned say, in safeguarding the fifty
heroes through all the perils of their Eux-
inc voyage. The burrowing erudition of
French savants and German professors has
also unearthed as facts that the ships
Achilles took to Troy had golden Nereid
images as their figureheads, while old
Nestor's were ornamented with the figures
nf 1aroi-rnIc in tia oof re IaSr- %ro~,