The Portrait of the Sir John Rae Reid
In Narryna’s entrance hall hangs a portrait of the ship, Sir John Rae Reid which Andrew Haig commissioned to proclaim his maritime and mercantile success. The Sir John Rae Reid was built in 1828 and owned by Andrew Haig’s uncle Jacob Mills. Haig was her first captain on the London-Calcutta run in that year. Mills had a business connection with Sir John Rae Reid, a Governor of the Bank of England, which explains the naming, but a connection between Haig and Rae Reid is less certain.
The ship was central to Haig’s early success as a merchant however the recession that swept through Europe from 1838, reaching the British colonies in 1839, was catastrophic to many merchants including Haig. In 1839 Mills ended the relationship with Haig and put the Sir John Rae Reid onto the London-West Indies trading route, under Captain Dwyer. In his journal, Haig lamented that this had lost him an annual income of £500. This loss, coupled with the severity of the recession (Sir John Rae Reid was declared bankrupt in 1847) undoubtedly hastened Haig’s financial crisis and the forced auction of Narryna in 1842. The Sir John Rae Reid was to spend over 20 years on the London-Mauritius run, sinking in 1864 during a storm off the coast of Spain in the same place as the Battle of Trafalgar. All passengers and crew were saved.
Elements of the Ship portrait
The Sir John Rae Reid was a ship as defined in Lloyd’s register as having three masts, square rigged, but lower mizzen fore-and-aft. Apart from the gaff-rigged cutter on the extreme right, the portrait is made up of three depictions of the Sir John Rae Reid from differing angles. This was a common convention in ship portraits from the 18th century onwards, to present lines and details from the best angles and to show the ship’s performance in different seas. For example, the second image (extreme left) gives the viewer the sight of the features and pretty-work of the stern.
The hull displays the painted pattern known as the ‘Nelson chequer’, a white band with black squares that mimic gun-ports, used by many ships to bluff potential attackers; although the ship did carry two cannon as some protection.
The Eddystone Lighthouse, with its unmistakeable profile features in the centre. This was the third lighthouse, also known as Smeaton’s Tower after the builder, John Smeaton. This locates the ship’s portrait to the English Channel with the Cornish coast, and Rame Head in the background.
The main view of the Sir John Rae Reid show it sailing triumphant and unperturbed amidst storm clouds and the tempestuous waters of the English Channel. The sea state is still brisk, being on a Beaufort scale of between 5 and 6; the ship is enjoying the fresh conditions, and Haig as the Captain would be on deck feeling the movement, hearing the crack of the sails, and enjoying the run down the channel with good sailing, boding well for a good voyage to Hobart. The figures seen on the foredeck seem to be wearing coats indicating the weather. The clothing is a similar colour which may mean that they are the crew wearing their work gear, although the figure on the stern has a flash of blue and may depict an idealized Captain Haig. In the ship’s waist there are passengers gazing on their last sight of England.
There are other features to note. In 1828, one of the earliest voyages of the Sir John Rae Reid was to Ceylon. The ship was brand new and featured a poop deck that was a feature of comfort (Fig. 1). The ship was also coppered, which was another feature indicating a quality ship, as putting copper sheathing on the hull to deter ship-worms, barnacles, and seaweed was expensive. By the 1830s only about a quarter of civilian ships were copper sheathed. ‘River-built’ was another claim for quality, indicating that the ship was built in the great shipyards on the Thames. Early editions of Lloyd’s Register just used the term ‘River’, for ships build on the Thames but by the mid-1830s had started using ‘London’ instead.
Figure 1. The Public Ledger and Daily Advertiser (London), 14th August, 1828.
Haig gives his address as the Jerusalem Coffee-house. This house had been in continuous existence since 1735. It was the centre of East India trading which is the region Haig knew well, having captained from India to Southeast Asia, China, and South America for over 15 years. These coffee houses are the origin of the London Stock Exchange.
The Jerusalem Coffee House is the rendezvous of owners of ships engaged in the commerce of India. A stranger, who enters it for the first time, is struck with astonishment at seeing a crowd of men moving around him with a kind of mercantile fury; he hears resound on all sides the words cotton, indigo, rice, insurance, hills of lading, cargo; he is every moment pushed by his neighbour, who is endeavouring to join those whom he has appointed to meet. A boy stands in a corner of the room to give the address of different captains, and to inform strangers of the hour at which they generally visit the Coffee House. The walls are covered with hand-bills and printed placards, which specify the time at which the different vessels set sail, and describe all the advantages of their fitting-up; in order, however, that you may he still better able to judge of this, very detailed plans circulate from one table to another. (The Oriental Herald (London), 8th January, 1826).
Jerusalem and East India Coffee house, Cowper's Court, Cornhill. Frequented by merchants and gentlemen concerned in the East India Company's service. Tontine [investment] Office. Fitted up in an elegant style for the use of the subscribers. (The Picture of London for 1805, p. 352)
A poop deck is a deck at the stern of a ship that is also the roof over the stern cabins. So it gave more space and comfort as it was essentially giving the cabins more head room, as opposed to below decks cabins. In a detail from the painting (Fig. 2), two people can be seen standing on the poop deck, which also stows the ship’s boats and Captain’s gig at the stern.
Figure 2. Stern of the Sir John Rae Reid, showing the poop deck and ship’s boats and possibly Captain Haig.
Narryna has dated the painting to 1832-35 and, working with curators at the Royal Museums Greenwich, have provisionally attributed the work to Joseph Heard. But for the innocent viewer there is one last puzzlement; what is the meaning of the flags?
The flags
For many years signal flags were mainly the preserve of naval ships who were looking to fight their opponents. This slowly changed and there were early systems of merchant marine signal flags (such as Wilson’s and firstly Popham’s in 1799), but in 1817 Captain Marryat introduced his system. Captain Marryat was also a prolific naval novelist, with his story Mr Midshipman Easy perhaps his best known work. Marryat’s flag system was a worldwide success and was adopted by every maritime nation, even being awarded a medal by the French.
Marryat’s system was a method of identifying a vessel, or a land station or feature for the mariner, by using flags that represented numbers that were then matched to names and locations in his guide book. In essence, every English ship at sea had a licence plate number; although his numbering system extended only to ships that were named on the Lloyd’s Register. Since this was England’s Merchant Marine, Lloyd’s Register was the pre-eminent list of ships and their quality, so by identifying themselves as such made a ship notable to the relevant authorities.
The Sir John Rae Reid was on the Lloyd’s Register (as ‘A1, First Class’) and was listed in Marryat’s book, which was published and bought by every harbour authority and ship’s captain around the world. A near contemporary (1839) Australian port identification document (Fig. 3), is used to explain the signal flags seen in the painting. It should be noted that in 1841 the flag signal system was increased to 16 flags, but this has no practical bearing here. Also, at this time, the Merchant Marine flag signal for the number ‘1’ was changed to the naval version, as there had been visual confusion reported at sea. The portrait of the Sir John Rae Reid clearly shows the signal flags twice, from the stern quarter (Fig. 4) and as the ship passes broadside (Fig. 5).
How the flags were used
These signal flags were used when the ship approached port so authorities could know which ship it is and send a pilot. In the picture, on the extreme right, can be seen a cutter. This sort of boat was used to bring the harbour pilot to and from arriving or departing ships and to transport passengers needing to disembark at the earliest possible moment. They were also used to pick up or deliver last minute documents or messages and bring customs or other officials out to the ship as needed.
As well, the flags could be used to send messages between vessels at sea and also to shore. Marryat’s book had an extensive word list and sentence vocabulary that were indicated by number combinations. For example, the number sequence ‘620’ was the ominous I have sprung a leak, while ‘623’ was, Leak increases and is dangerous. 967 was the question; Have you any women on board? And 968 the reply; I have women on board. Some were warnings; You are too near the rocks (817), or messages; I mean to keep sail set, and carry on all night, as I am anxious to get into port (829).
Figure 3. Australian flag chart, for Sydney port in 1839, which includes Marryat’s signal flag code on the left (Courtesy of the State Library of NSW, public domain).
Figure 4. The Sir John Rae Reid flags seen from the port stern quarter. Note the crew working the sails.
The Sir John Rae Reid’s identification number
The flag signals are read from the top down, so the top flag is a pennant which indicated in which block of 10,000 ships the vessel was registered in. In this case it is the First Distinguishing Pennant. Then the numbers read down as 9, 4, 2, 6 (Fig. 5) this is the identification number for the vessel.
Figure 5. The ship’s flag signals viewed broadside and paired with the 1839 flag chart.
To determine the ship that belongs to that flag signal code, the list in Marryat’s book was consulted. The ship’s number on the list could change from edition to edition, for example, in the eleventh edition (1847) the Sir John Rae Reid was listed in the Second Distinguishing Pennant section with the number 894. The closest edition I could find to the painting date was 1826. However on the flyleaf someone, presumably the owner, has written their name and the year ‘1829’, so it is reasonable to consider that the book was in use around this time. Ship owners were encouraged to get their ships on Marryat’s list (Fig. 6), and there were numbers that were blank so the books could be updated as required and that is what we find here.
Figure 6. Request for ship’s names to be sent in for inclusion in Marryat’s Code of Signals book (1826).
Looking up the Sir John Rae Reid’s number in the book, 9426 has the handwritten addition of the name (Fig. 7), under the section for the First Distinguishing Pennant ships. So we can conclude that circa the 1830s the flag signal with the ships number seen in the painting is the ship’s number for the Sir John Rae Reid.
There are four other hand written names in this section of the book; the Tamar, the St Vincent’s Planter, the Thomas Daniels, and the Skerne. Looking these vessels up in the Lloyds registry none of them appear before 1829. The Daniels and the Planter are included in the registry of 1829, while the Tamar and the Skerne first appear in 1832.
The handwriting appears to be the same hand, the same nib, so it is possible that the names were written in the book in 1832 or later. At the very least, the Rae Reid, Daniels, and the Planter could have been added in 1829.
Figure 7. At number 9426 the flag signal seen in the painting at Narryna is the name Sir John Rae Reid (Marryat’s Code of Signals, Ed. 4, 1826, annotated circa 1829-32).
All of the preceding information leads to the conclusion that the painting is of Haig’s premier ship and the centre of his success in the 1830s. His enterprise and skills were recognised:
Domestic Intelligence … The Sir John Rae Reid left this port for London on the 16th February, 1834. … The voyage home and out of the Sir John Rae Reid is the quickest ever known. We understand, Captain Haig intends to remain in this Colony, and intends to establish himself as a merchant in Hobart Town. We wish him every possible success, and are happy to welcome him as a settler amongst us. Colonial Times (Hobart) 20 January 1835 p. 6
While not yet verified, this could be the quickest voyage on record before the time of the clipper ships in the 1850s. With a fine new ship, his family, and property in a prime location, in a colonial town with excellent prospects, this could have been the time he would feel the pride and security enough to commission the ship’s portrait now hanging in Narryna.
Acknowledgements
I give thanks to Nadia Volkova and Felicity Hickman for their kind suggestions for improving this article.
Author: Jon Sumby
Dr Sumby is a research associate at IMAS in International Fisheries. He volunteers his research skills to investigating the byways of Narryna's history. Currently he's the co-editor of the Haig Journals Transcription Project, which will be completed this year. In his free time he enjoys walking, talking with dogs, and chatting with people over a cuppa.