G. DELL (BRITISH, 19TH CENTURY) Clipper Ship 'South Australi...

Hammer

£900

G. DELL (BRITISH, 19TH CENTURY)

Clipper Ship 'South Australian' off Beachy Head

Signed and dated indistinctly 'G. DELL 186..' (lower right)

Oil on canvas

23¼ x 35¼in. (59 x 89.5cm.)

Sotheby's London: Marine Pictures and Nautical Works of Art, 3 May 1995, lot 57.

Exhibited: Burstow Gallery Brighton College, The Age of Sail and Steamship, 1982.

Owned by the famous merchant house of Devitt & Moore of London, the beautiful composite clipper South Australian was built for them in Pile’s yard at Sunderland in 1868. Registered at 1,078 tons gross (1,040 net), she measured 201 feet in length with a 36-foot beam. Intended for the company’s successful Adelaide passenger trade, she was commanded from new by Captain David Bruce, an old ‘sea dog’ in the truest sense. A weather-beaten, grey-whiskered Scot with a game leg crushed by a runaway cask in heavy weather, he habitually wore a straw hat and puggaree*, and was widely regarded as the most colourful character on the Adelaide run. His three sons all served their time under him and each of them rose to command the South Australian later in her life. After a very successful career in which she achieved the reputation of being “a very fine sea boat with very comfortable accommodation….. for passengers”, she became one of the so-called ‘wool clippers’ in the early 1880s, her best-recorded passage home being Melbourne to London in the winter of 1883-4 in 98 days. Finally sold to Messrs. Woodside & Workman of Belfast in 1887, she was sunk after a collision with an unidentified vessel in a force 9 gale off Lundy Island on 14^th February 1889 whilst on passage from Cardiff to Rosario (Argentina) loaded with railway track.

* A puggaree (or pagri) is a light scarf worn around the hat to keep off the sun.

puncture in seagull lower left, retouching throughout, relined, would benefit from a clean