Figure-heads.
FIGURE-HEAD which decorates the prow of a ship is, as that personification of universal knowledge invented by Macaulay, "every schoolboy," knows, an institution of the greatest antiquity, and dates back to the time when men first began to "go down to the sea" and "do business in great waters."
The aforesaid schoolboy, who in the present day is an archæologist of no mean capacity, is familiar with the aspect of the Greek and Roman war-galleys as represented in marble and bronze remains of ancient times, and he can discourse learnedly about the prora, the rostrum, the gubernaculum, the cheniscus, and other details of the vessels of classic days. But it is with the more modern period that I propose to deal in the following notes.
Figure-head of modern ironclad. (from H.M.S. "Neptune.")
Figure-head of the "Seahorse," in which Nelson served as midshipman.
All visitors to the Naval Exhibition have been struck with admiration at the wonderful display of ships' models which have been collected together at Chelsea. From the magnificent half-model of the Victoria in the Armstrong Gallery, more than 30 ft. long, down to the little Seahorse, on board of which Nelson served as midshipman in 1771-2, they all give evidence of the gradual development of our navy, and as far as the wooden ships are concerned, to the artistic skill lavished on the decorations of bow, stern and quarters. But with the substitution of iron for wood the figure-head gradually lost its importance, and in Her Majesty's ships may now be pronounced almost extinct, the prevailing fashion being to ornament the two sides of the bow in a flat treatment, and to have no projection beyond the cutwater, as in the sketch of the ironclad Neptune.
Mr. Clark Russell says, with reference to the decay of figure-heads, "Whatever the new fashions may be termed, the old ones are yielding to them, and the figurehead proper survives chiefly
