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Artist or Maker: MARK OF DANIEL SMITH AND ROBERT SHARP, LONDON, 1770
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Provenance: Presented to Thomas Barker (1733-1779) and then by descent to
John Edward Barker of Brooklands (d.1912) and then by descent to his son
Edward Rowley Wilson Barker, of Warrenton, Virginia, U.S.A (d.1921) and then by descent to his granddaughter
A Descendant of the Original Recipient; Christie's New York, 29 April 1987, lot 530
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Exhibited: London, Christie's, The Glory of the Goldsmith, Magnificent Gold and Silver from the Al-Tajir Collection, 1989, no.103
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Literature: The Glory of the Goldsmith, Magnificent Gold and Silver from the Al-Tajir Collection, London, 1989, p.141 no.103
Christie's Review of the Season, 1987, p.318
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Notes: THE PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN
Thomas Barker, the son of Thomas and Sarah Barker of Bakewell, Derbyshire, was baptised on 11 April 1733. His father was Steward to the Duke of Rutland, presumably at Haddon Hall, and his uncle, John Barker M.D. (1708-1748), was a medical writer and physician of some renown, being eventually appointed Physician to His Majesty's Army in the Low Countries (D.N.B., pp. 1123-1124). According to a transcription of letters and other records of the Barker family produced around 1900, Thomas was sent to Eton in 1744. By October, 1747, he seems to have become very unhappy at school and his uncle John wrote to his father to suggest applying to 'The Duke of Rutland to recommend him to some of ye Lds. of the Admiralty that he may be sent on Board a Man of War to be instructed in Naval Affairs, & in time have a Chance of getting a Ship himself. His Crony and School-Fellow Holland was recommended to Admiral Boscowen & is gone along with him in his Expedition to ye East Indies.
At fourteen he joined the Royal Navy and by 1773, three years after his association with The Lady Margaret, he had become Lieutenant Barker. By the time his will was drawn up on 17 March 1776, he was a Captain. Among specific bequests to members of his family he left his nephew Thomas, son of his brother John, 'My silver Punch bowl, ladle and strainer.'
The Glasgow Journal, no.1478, for 16-23 November 1769, carried an advertisement for the sailing ship The Lady Margaret: Now lying at Greenock, is ready to take on goods, and will sail by the 25th December inst.' The Lady Margaret, built earlier that year and owned by George Kippen and Co., Merchants in Glasgow, was on her first voyage, bound for James River, Virginia, under master James Kippen and with a cargo that included 1,100 pounds of haberdashery, 6,700 pounds wrought iron, the carriage, wheels, leather and braces of a chariot, several dozen women's Callimanco shoes, seventeen sails containing 4,069 yards of linen, and among many other items copper kettles, skillets, anvils, bellows, jam pots, refined sugar, strong ale, Portuguese wine, earthen and 'delph' ware, window glass, white rope, ribbon, silk, stationery, soap, linseed oil and paints. In Virginia this cargo would almost certainly have been replaced with tobacco for the return voyage.
The Lady Margaret sailed for Virginia on 17 January 1770, but soon the severity of the weather forced an attempted return to Greenock. The Glasgow Journal relates the final hours of the ship as she was caught in a gale and wrecked off the Ayrshire coast at Pencorse, now Portencross, on 23 January. In a Petition dated a month later (AC8/1485) brought before the High Admiralty of Scotland by George Kippen & Company, the full extent of the tragedy was related:
'Humbly shewth
That your Petitioners were Owners & proprietors of the Ship called Lady Margaret of Glasgow, James Kippen Master, of burden capable to contain upward of five hundred hogsheads of Tobacco, & newly built at Greenock, the value of which Ship with her outfit was upwards of Two thousand six hundred pounds sterling
That the said Ship having been lately loaded at Greenock, with valuable cargo of Merchandize amounting to upward of Fourteen thousand pounds sterling Set sail from Greenock on the 17th of January last, on her first voyage, bound for James River in Virginia....
That the said Ship proceeded in the said voyage till near the Island of Torry off Ireland, when, by contrary winds & stress of weather, The master & mariners found it expedient & necessary to endeavor to make a safe port, and the storm encreasing & wind still continuing contrary, they endeavored to return to Greenock, In which course, They on the 23rd of January last about nine o'clock at night, reached as far as the Holy Isle off Arran, and continued proceeding with a south west wind till after ten o'clock that night when the wind suddenly shifted from south west to north west, which laid the Ships saills aback and it being then extremely dark rainy & blowing a violent tempest, they, before they could get command of the Ship or could turn her to her right course, were drove on a rocky shore a little to the southward of the old castle Pencorse or Portincross in the parish of west Kilbryde & County of Ayr
That early next morning the Master of the said Ship sent an Express to Glasgow informing the Owners of this disaster; which account was immediately communicated to the Owners of the Goods & the underwriters upon them; upon which some of the Owners of the Ship went off from Glasgow to the place where she was put on shore to give what assistance they could for the benefit of all concerned....
That Mr. Fisher accordingly came... and from the situation & condition in which he found the Ship, he judged it absolutely necessary & insisted that she should be scuttled... whereby the goods on board might be more safely taken out.... they likewise broke thro' & tore up the underdeck, and by these means the most part of the Cargo was got on shore, in which they were all along constantly employed.... and upon the said Sunday the Eleventh current, she was parted in two.'
The account is entirely silent upon the question of possible lives lost. However, it is clear that the Master survived to contact the owners next day; and it may be optimistically surmised that the mariners were thus not only saved but employed for some weeks in salvaging their cargo, to the evident satisfaction of the owners and underwriters who awarded the present punch bowl. It is without doubt one of the finest examples of engraved English silver from the second half of the eighteenth century.
The engraving of the wreck on this punch bowl is stylistically very close to another depiction of a shipwreck, on a salver presented to the master of a vessel which salvaged the cargo of a ship lost off the coast of China in 1745, illustrated in Clayton, The Collector's Dictionary of Gold and Silver, 2nd ed., 1985, p. 170, pl. 255. Both these examples show a much more assured hand than the depiction of ships in front of a town, the Exploits of H.M.S. Tartar, on a salver by Alexander Johnson of 1757 in the Inverness Museum, illustrated in Oman, English Engraved Silver 1150-1900, 1978, pl. 122.
All three examples illustrate Charles Oman's remark that 'it became quite usual for the owners or insurers to present a piece of plate (teapot, waiter or salver) to a captain who had saved his ship by good seamanship or from capture by privateers' (op. cit.), p. 106
We are grateful to Alan Roe, Esq. for his assistance in researching the history of the wreck of The Lady Margaret.
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