- We're going down to the sea in the art of Ship figureheads and the Song of a Shaman.

Our host will be the Mariners Museum.

In Newport News a few days ago we went to the Mariners visiting there with Carol Olson, an expert on the lovely carved figureheads that have graced the PRS of ships for centuries.

The Mariners's figurehead collection is one of the world's finest and Ms.

Olson will lead us through it along the way, telling some tangy stories.

After that, we'll hear songs, sea Shanties as performed by Stan Hugo, Mr.

Hugo from Wales following in the tradition of his seafaring family sailed as a young man around Cape Horn.

His life since then has been full of adventures worthy of Melville and Moby Dick.

Mr.

Hugo now 75 has written several books on on the sea and sea songs Join us for a salty program.

The art and song of the sea ship figureheads embody in the art of the carver, the aspirations of the ship's owner, its crew, and sometimes even a nation.

This figurehead of an eagle.

Our national symbol greets visitors as they arrive in the in the Mariners Museum.

It's an unusual figurehead, unusual in its size and in the manner in which it was carved.

Carol Olson, this is one of the figureheads you've been working on, been studying.

It's this is unusual in its size, is it not?

- It is.

It's extraordinary.

It has a wingspan of about 19 and a half feet.

It weighs over 3,200 pounds.

I think it must be the largest extent figurehead any longer.

And there's a story too, in fact about speaking about its size.

A little boy stood here looking up at it in awe and was overheard to ask his mother if that was the stork - Carol.

This was carved in 1881.

So this was toward the latter part of the great era of of of figure of ship figurehead carving.

- That's right.

- Who did this?

- The carver's name is John Haley Bellamy.

He was a famous carver of eagles and we know that he worked into the early 20th century.

- It must have been a big ship.

It was on, - It was on a very large ship.

The USS Lancaster was over 250 feet in length and it was rebuilt up in Portsmouth, New Hampshire in 1881.

That's when it received the figurehead.

- Tell me about the PE peculiarities of Bellamy style.

- Three things in particular characterize bellamy's work in his eagles.

That is the concavity of the, of the wings.

You see that there's a believability to the shape of them.

It gives movement and and flight to the bird.

The beak is squared off and the third feature are the conical shaped eyes and you can see that the top of the eye continues and then becomes a feather.

- I've been struck by the claws.

They're so powerful.

- I agree.

There's a gripping reality to them and a lot of believability and detail to all of the bird.

- And this is not unusual, a figurehead that also is a national symbol.

We have another one that's true just nearby.

Just nearby.

That's also a - National symbol.

We do Tim, indeed this is a national symbol, but we know she didn't start out that way.

Let me explain how we acquired this carving.

It characterizes what happens to so many figureheads.

An official of our museum was walking down a street in Jersey City in the 1930s and he looked up and in the second story of a warehouse, he saw this carving looking out at him and he went up and he talked to the owner and the manager and they said, oh, that thing, we've had it stored around here for decades with the this furniture we've got.

We don't know anything about its history.

And so often that is the case because when the figureheads come off of their ships, they don't have anything inscribed on them to identify them.

Well, the museum acquired this carving and put it on display and then years later, just by good fortune, they found a newspaper photograph that showed a view of her on the bow of her iron ship.

And they learned then that the, the ship's name was Ben Moore, that she was built in 1870 in Port Glasgow, Scotland.

Now the question is, well, if she is Scotland built, what is this lady doing in American stars and stripes?

And the answer that we learned is that 50 years after the vessel was built, she had for the first time American owners.

And so in America in 1920 with a can of paint people transformed her into Columbia.

And we can see that wasn't her original identity because for one thing she has that snake bracelet on her wrist.

So sometimes the identities are not immediately correct or apparent.

We can see too that the, the stripes don't follow the lines of the carving and normally what a carver will do is inscribed in size the lines that he's going to follow with paint.

You don't see that here, so you get right on the surface.

Some, some immediate hints that this is not the correct, the original identity.

Something else you can see up here too is a metal fastening.

This is one of the devices that held her tour ship and normally these are covered with wood Bs, but this one is exposed and I think is a very educational to us.

Now again, her ship dates to the 19th century, but we have so many other examples of how the, the act of Ornamenting vows goes back four thousands of years, both now on display at the Mariners Museum Show how people all over the world have decorated hulls with paintings and carvings meaningful to them.

There is a great variety in each culture's designs from China to Spain and around the world, eyes have been put on boats to help the boats see and to carry their passengers safely.

Totem figures of plants and animals are painted on Alaskan and Canadian dugout canoes, metal decorations have been applied to Venetian gondolas for centuries.

- Carol with the Columbia that you, in your, during your research with the Columbia, you had the identity changed while you were researching it or at least you learned the, the identity was different with this fella, you had an even different problem.

You didn't even know who this fellow was, did you?

- That's true.

We knew that it came from HMS Edinburgh a a military vessel built in in Britain in 1811, but Edinburgh is the name of a place and that didn't tell us who the carving was, but we knew that there were other Duke figureheads and so it was a lucky guess it might be the Duke of Edinburgh.

And when one of the docents here came to ask if I needed some help, I said yes, can you come up with a portrait of the Duke of Edinburgh in 1811?

And he came back with a photograph of William or a drawing of William Frederick who is a very good likeness of our figurehead.

- The shape of this figure is so different from the other ones we've seen, particularly the Columbia.

We just saw.

How did, how did this fellow stick on a ship?

How did he hold onto the bow of a ship?

- Well, one of the evidences we have of his fast fascinating to the ship is the recess down here at the base.

The stem of the ship would go up into the figure and that was another way that they were held onto the bow.

- He has a very elaborate headdress, all that shrubbery on top of his head, but over here Carol, right next to it, we have another figure with an even more elaborate head headdress, isn't it?

- That's true.

- Who is he?

Who is this guy?

- This is a Roman military attire and it, it may be a portrait of royalty at the time.

We don't know that sometimes kings though would have themselves represented as a Roman general.

This figurehead was on a very large and prestigious vessel.

A second rate carried about 84 guns in 1825.

So it may well be a portrait of someone, - But we don't know who this one is.

But let's go see another figurehead with the perhaps as elaborate, I know it's one of your favorites.

The bell of organ also with a very elaborate costume.

- Right Tim?

This carving the bell of Oregon was done by by a fellow named s Samson.

He worked up in Bath, Maine and he did this work in 1876 and we're finding that several things characterize his style in particular, he turns the scroll backward.

This is completely opposite from what most carvers at his time are doing.

Also, he's straightened the line, the front line of the figure.

Ordinarily car figurehead are stepping out and he has them in a more refined pose and he is also very noted for all the detail that he puts in the costume of the figure.

You can see he's even given her gloves.

He's, he takes such incredible care with so many details.

- Now we, you know that Samson did this.

What?

What more do we know about Samson?

Do we know a lot about it?

- Well, we're getting a lot more information.

We're getting information about his life, his carving.

We have now too, most remarkably seven other examples of his work and it's very uncommon that you should have such a fine, fine.

So many examples of one carver's work.

- Wait a minute, goodness sake.

You mean you only know seven And that's a lot.

- That's true.

We think that we're very fortunate to have including this when eight examples of S Samson's work and it, I think it is important because it helps us not only to see the development in his style, but when we get a group of his carvings, a group of another car, another carver's work, then pretty soon we'll be able to see who the true masters in this craft were.

- Have you been able to find the photographs of the of the ships these this was on, - Yes.

We have ships, two ships, two views of the bell of Oregon herself and then she had a sister ship Western Bell.

We have a view of that vessel and of a few of the others.

They're all about 185 feet and we're getting a lot of information about them.

In fact, we have just uncovered a story written in 1886 by a young boy who was just going to see for the first time and it was on Bell of Oregon and he writes about how difficult conditions were.

He talks about trying to grip the rigging in the February cold about the heart attack that they had to eat and how it was just filled with weevils and how a very tough life on board Bella of Oregon was.

And as I think about that and I look at the figurehead, it seems that the carving would be all the more special to the crew because she some is outside of that difficult daily life and and beautiful - In her library office.

Carol Olson organizes the books and materials of her research.

Ms.

Olson who has a background in art history and archeology and has written a book on figureheads, is working at the Mariners as a consultant gathering and interpreting all the information she can about one of the nation's largest figurehead collections.

Figurehead carvers worked for the most part with no thought that people of a later time might be interested in the beautiful and decorative symbols they handmade to find out about ships.

Ms.

Olson frequently refers to the telephone book of shipping Lloyd's Register of ships when she doesn't know the name of a figurehead, what it represents or its ship, her job is more difficult.

She makes careful drawings of the unknown figurehead measures it exactly and tries to match it with figureheads of similar size and shape and maritime museums around the world.

Her mail at the Mariners resembles a United Nations mail sack.

Other museums send her pictures of their figureheads and she tries to match them with carvings at the mariners.

She has been able through long experience to pinpoint styles and patterns peculiar to particular carvers, to carving businesses or to certain ship builders.

With this information working like a detective, she builds her cases.

- Tim, even though we knew the history of this carving, we knew that she came from a bark built up in Quebec in 1882.

It was still worthwhile to do a detailed drawing for her and it revealed almost really the signature of this unknown carver.

We see that his style is characterized by kind of horseshoe shapes on this side and dagger shapes on this side that he truncates part of the skirt and that he has the skirt kind of bouncing around.

There's a lot of activity in this, in this in the skirt and he sweeps part of the fabric around so it helps bring you around and see and see all of this figure.

And he characterizes the scroll work by this little pillow shape down here and why it's been very helpful to see what characterizes this man's style is that it's helped us to find four other figureheads done by this man.

They're all over the world and the most helpful one of all is in Western Australia where they have a view of her on the bow of her ship.

Also by studying these four other carvings, we can see that an arm has been restored not correctly on our carving.

All of the other figures hold their hand right about where under where the rose is there.

And you can see that's a flat area we now know that is where this figure's arm should originally have gone.

- Carol, you're mentioning the arms on the Edmonton is interesting.

I know in the other room there's here in this other room, there's one that really I've always liked.

It's the Jenny Lin, the the famous Swedish Nightingale from the 19th century here.

She has no arms whatsoever.

Why?

- The reason is that these arms were removable and we can tell that by the mortis that is set in up at the shoulder, the arm would have been attached by a tenant arrangement and very possibly it's because her arms were extended.

Perhaps in the gesture of song we can see from the incising in the the dress itself in the bodice that the arm was probably extended out, but you'd wanna be able to remove that arm at sea so that it wouldn't be damaged by waves.

- Well that's like the bell of Oregon we had earlier.

Her arm was extended but it did come off that right just like this - One that's right.

- Now Jenny was done.

She was a very popular figure for for carvers and I think, tell me why.

- Well not only was she a young, talented woman, but she gave generously to several charities and we know that one was a was sailors homes.

So there can be practical as well as romantic reasons for choosing these figureheads.

Some figures are contemporary like Jenny Lind we've just seen, but others even come from mythology.

We have here Circe from Homer's poem of the Odyssey.

We might wonder why she was chosen for she figurehead and I think one good reason is that she was the granddaughter of the ocean.

It would never hurt to have her on the bow of your ship.

And in fact we've come up with some excellent photographs, closeup of her on the bow of her vessel.

We have deck views and see some of the men who worked on the ship and sometimes the men who worked on the vessels we know repainted the figure when they were, when the ships were at sea.

So we don't necessarily expect them to have their original paint when they're on display in the museum.

What's unusual about this lovely carving is that she is unpainted, but we know that originally she, she did receive a a coat of paint and that all figureheads did.

One of the outstanding things about her is the delicate necklace that she wears and I found another figurehead almost identical to her and the carver has even repeated the necklace on the second carving as well in the same detail.

Another feature of this figurehead is the harp at her waistband and we're wondering if that isn't a clue to her identity since the harp can be associated with Ireland.

We're now looking at vessels named Hibernia, the Latin name for Ireland as the possible vessel from which she came.

- Carol Olson's got a tiger by the tail.

She's the only person in America who is studying figureheads in exactly the way.

She is comparing one figurehead to another, finding patterns among figureheads.

I think one thing I've learned today is that figureheads are a real definite art form.

Sometimes they're called folk art, but that's really a demeaning term.

A study of figureheads is a study of the way seamen lived, a study of the, of the aspirations and hopes of ship captains.

In other words, it's a study of man, which is what the best art is.

A study of man semen not only went down to the sea and ships with with carvings of figureheads, they also went with song.

And next on our program today we're going to hear song Welshman sea shanty singer Stan Hugo.

- I'll sing you a song if you give me some gin to me way.

Hey, blow the man down, little B bows this ear block bows right down to the pin.

Give me some time to blow the man down.

Now as I was rolling down paradise, straight to me way, hey blow the man, a big Irish policeman I happen to meet.

Give me some time to blow.

The man says he are a blank ball brother cu of your hair to me way, Hey, blow says he and a blank ball the that you wear.

Gimme some time to blow the man down.

You've sailed in some packet but flies the blank.

Balls and me way.

Hey, blow the man down.

You rub some poor Dutchman, a boots, clothes and all him me some time to blow the man down.

Oh policeman, oh policeman, you do me great.

Wrong to me way.

Hey, blow the man down.

I'm a flying fish sailor just home from Hong Kong.

Give me some time to blow and down.

So I stove in his face and I smashed in his jaw to me way.

Hey, blow the man down, says he young fella, you're breaking the law.

Gimme some time to blow the man down.

Now they gave me six months in Liverpool town to me way, Hey, blow the man down for the Putin and a kicking and a blow.

Gimme some time to blow the man down.

Now that was a Liverpool topal Halliard shanty.

First and foremost.

I've chosen that because I used to sail outta Liverpool many years ago and I was a shanty man in these ships.

That is the man who sang such songs to keep the rhythm, keep the man happy and ease the lot of the whole business of hoisting, which were heavy.

These yards were very heavy things.

You had an iron ship with yards weighing about three and a half ton each and you had three six of these to hoist up.

It was quite a task, particularly if you'd just be on the shore on a binge for about a couple of months.

And there was a newly joined ship.

You were bored and the effects of the booze were playing.

It was quite a job to go out and hoist all these sails.

And this often happened as the ships were going out through the locks gates, they'd start the shanty to hoist the sails.

Now as well as that type of sound, which was a haling song, Hallard Shan, by the way, Hallard is nothing more than a broken down form of the word hall yard.

That means the yard is the cross piece that the sails are fastened to.

Hall yard now as well as Hallard.

Shanice, there were also caps and songs.

Now these were where you walked around that mushroom shaped object on the folks' head and the sharp end of the ship.

And you stuck bars in, you put the bars in to make it look something like a wheel and you all marched around this thing.

This was a more of a march like thing, more melodic possibly than the Halliard songs and a bit longer in most cases.

With the Grand Chorus, this is American shanty.

Oh, he was hailing down the river from Liverpool.

He and the sails were sent.

Oh, and the nch is full all across the planes makes sea shall will he and away we'll go.

He away santino he and and away.

We'll go all across the planes.

Mexico now in Mexico, wide along to be behave away San, we're the tight wasted girl.

Fall on each knee all across the plays.

So will he and away we'll go.

He away San He up and away.

We'll go all across the planes.

And at the end of the Halliard song, the mate would normally shout out belay.

And then you'd stop in the middle perhaps of your favorite verse.

In the end of a caption song, they'd shout out vast healing and you come to a halt.

As I said before, I have been a Shandy man in many ships.

A GaN British, even in German, one of the last men in the world to sing this type of song.

Nowadays it's done in folk clubs, but I actually did at work the last British square sailing vessel I was in.

I was shipwrecked on the west coast of Africa among the Cape Bird islands.

One called the island of Bo Vista, which means beautiful view, not that we had much of a view.

And after we pile over two or three reefs, we landed as shore among the sand dunes.

Now these islands are salt, no war, no fresh water anywhere.

And we'd be able to get thirsty in the heat of about 120 degrees in the sun.

And a little boy black boy came along to us.

We hoped he spoke some sort of pushy or Spanish and we said to him, awe.

So he never brought no awe, no water.

What he did bring back was a bottle of champagne.

Then some more black people came along with more champagne.

Then it was a matter of changing for changing black dog for white monkey comea.

Comea.

We hear them.

Our shirts, Pantalone Pantalone.

We gave 'em our trousers.

What had happened was we didn't know years ago before on the same reefs, virtually as we come, as Spanish steamer, where the full cargo champagne had been erected and they'd taken the stuff ashore and buried it.

Hence the champagne.

Eventually an English sensational newspaper used this as the punchline crew of the last British word, sailing vessel shipwrecked on the west coast of Africa in the island of Boa, seated among the sand dunes and here's the punchline, nude and stewed.

Now the last shanty ever to be sung at sea.

We sang a few days before that I happened to be the shanty man.

There's a pumping song called Fire Down Below.

She was just a village made with red and rose and cheeks.

Chili io.

She went to church and Sunday school and she sang this An and Sweet as Fire Down.

I took T Malkay and he pulled Phase him away.

I hold.

I took French leave and a sail away.

Now I fell from grace.

This fire down below this fire, this fire down below.

Jimmy.

Hey, I ho this fire in the S pipe and it's time for us to go.

Let's fire down below.

Of course we could have finished up with Lever Johnny Le, the last song ever to be sung aboard of a sailing ship lever.

Johnny Lee, as you're leaving the ship now, the old man saying, leave job, leave.

I model.

You will get your pay.

And it's time for us to leave her.

Leave her, leave her, her, her.

The done and the wind.

Don't blow it for us.