$5,535
American School, Late 19th/Early 20th Century Portrait of the Four-masted Steel Barque Dirigo in Coastal Waters. Unsigned, the vessel identified on pennant and bow. Oil on canvas, 23 x 35 in., in a later molded giltwood frame. Condition: Good, canvas rippled at four corners, surface grime. Provenance: To Captain George W. Goodwin (first captain of ship and at the helm for 13 years), then by family descent to the present owners. Note: The Dirigo was built in 1894 by Arthur Sewall & Co., Bath, Maine, the first steel ship built in the United States, to the design of J.F. Waddington, of Liverpool, at a total cost of $157,000. She was launched at the Bath, Maine, shipyard on February 3, 1894. Her first captain was George W. Goodwin, of Calais, Maine, and his name is printed on paper label fragment affixed to the backing paper. She was a bulk cargo vessel plying the Atlantic and Pacific for many years until WWI, on March 2, 1916, while carrying a load of barley to Sweden she was arrested by a British patrol ship and was brought to Lerwick, Shetland Islands, where the cargo was confiscated as it was believed that the barley she was carrying would be trans-shipped from Sweden to Germany. She was released a year later, but on May 31, 1917, was sunk by explosives from a German submarine six miles southwest of the Eddystone Rock lighthouse off the coast of England.
Auctioneer:
Skinner
Date:
2013-03-03
