GEORGE MEARS (BRITISH, 1826-1906) The Royal Yacht 'Victoria ...

Hammer

£3,000

GEORGE MEARS (BRITISH, 1826-1906)

The Royal Yacht 'Victoria & Albert II'

Signed and dated 'G Mears 1873' (lower right)

Oil on canvas

17½ x 35in. (44.5 x 89.5cm.)

Literature:

British 19^th Century Marine Painting by Denys Brook-Hart, 1974, page 22, plate 54.

Sotheby’s Chester: Fine Marine Pictures etc., 24 June 1982, lot 173A.

Her Majesty’s Yacht Victoria & Albert (II) was built at Pembroke Dock and launched on 16^th January 1855. Designed to replace the original Victoria & Albert which had become too small, the new yacht displaced 2,470 tons and measured 300 feet in length with a 40 foot beam. Powered by 2,400ihp. oscillating engines, her paddle wheels could drive her at 15 knots and she carried bunkers for 350 tons of coal. A handsome schooner-rigged vessel with a pair of elegant bell-topped funnels, she was the epitome of the mid-Victorian age yet she was to remain in service until the very end of the Queen’s long lifetime.

Commissioned on 3^rd March 1855, the yacht’s first outing was to convey the Queen and Prince Albert to France for their State Visit to Paris that August and the royal couple were captivated with her from the outset. Soon treated by them as a floating home, the early years aboard her - prior to the Prince Consort’s death in 1861 - were so filled with happy memories that the Queen became increasingly unwilling to travel anywhere by sea unless on her favourite yacht. Continually refusing to entertain all suggestions of a modern screw replacement, Victoria & Albert (II) was kept in constant use and her final official passage was to carry the aged Queen to Ireland in April 1900. Just prior to this, in 1897, the Queen had finally consented to the laying-down of a new yacht but by the time it was ready for sea in July 1901, Queen Victoria herself had died and she did not have to witness the demise of her much-loved Victoria & Albert (II) when it was scrapped in 1904.

Scattered retouching and relining