Behind Watson and the Shark

The National Gallery of Art recently shared Alysha Page’s article about an unusual figure in John Singleton Copley’s painting Watson and the Shark.

Copley actually made three versions of this picture for merchant Brook Watson, the oldest now in the National Gallery. A second copy, also from 1778, is in Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. A smaller version painted in 1782 is in the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Page’s essay focuses on one figure, writing: “The Black man stands upright at the top of the pyramid-like composition of this busy harbor scene.” I think the apex of the pyramid is clearly the right hand of the white sailor beside that man, about to thrust a lance down toward the shark. At the very least that white sailor’s head is at the same level as the black man’s.

It seems significant that the black sailor in the boat is positioned behind all the white men. Though he loosely holds the rope tossed to Watson, we don’t see him throwing out that life line. Instead, other sailors are frozen in dramatic action: spearing the shark, leaning down toward the water to grasp Watson.

All that said, the mere presence of a black sailor among Watson’s rescuers is clearly significant. As Page points out, Copley’s sketch for the scene showed that man as white, so he made a conscious effort to change that detail.

Among Copley’s other canvases is a study of a black man’s face, usually assumed to be the model for this figure in Watson and the Shark. I think the study is much more individualized and expressive than the figure in Watson and the Shark. But it was so rare for paintings to show black men among white men that the final figure doesn’t have to be most lively, or at the apex of the people shown, to be meaningful.

“They found in its stomach a package…”

I couldn’t help being intrigued by this anecdote from Aderivaldo Ramos de Santana’s recent article on the Black Perspectives history blog, as translated by Ana Catharina Santos Silva:

[In 1799] in the West Indies, in the context of conflicts involving France, Spain, Holland and England, Lieutenant Hugh Whylie [of the Royal Navy] stopped Nancy, an American ship.

Nancy’s journey, a 125-ton brig, began in the port of Baltimore on July 3, 1799, and was bound for the ports of Curaçao and Santo Domingo (now Haiti) to buy goods that would supply American trade. After the first stage, the ship followed its destination towards Port-au-Prince, but bad weather and a broken mast forced it to stop at the small Île à Vache (Cow Island), in southern Haiti.

Soon after, Nancy was chased and approached by Sparrow, one of the English cruisers commanded by Lieutenant Whylie, who watched the Haitian coast. Since the ship was suspected of being a “good prey” for the illegal trafficking of goods with the enemy nations, it was then escorted to Port Royal, Jamaica, where a lawsuit was filed. Nancy’s captain, Thomas Briggs, fervently claimed the vessel was neutral, with no connection to the Dutch or Spanish.

As investigations progressed, another English cruiser, H.M.S. Aberdavenny, commanded by Lieutenant Michael Fitton, found the main evidence to convict Briggs and his crew of the crimes of perjury and smuggling. On August 30, Fitton spotted, near Jacmel, a dead bull [whale] fought by hungry sharks, 119 kilometers from Cow Island, a description that might take one back to Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick. In the interest of catching at least one of the predators, the lieutenant threw a bait and managed to lure the biggest of them. As the sailors opened and cleaned the animal, they found in its stomach a package with documents carefully tied. The leaves were separated on deck and set to dry in the sun, revealing who the real trading partners of the American brig were.

Except for the envelope, the letters were in perfect shape. One of them, dated on the island of Curaçao, was addressed to Christopher Schultz, a Jewish merchant from Baltimore, and dealt with merchant affairs. Based on this documentation, Nancy and her charge were condemned as “proper war preys” on November 25, 1799.

Ramos de Santana’s article discusses other ways that sharks intersected with the transatlantic slave trade, both biologically and symbolically. Indeed, this wasn’t the only example of a ship’s records being thrown overboard and retrieved from the intestinal tract of a shark.

(The picture above is, of course, John Singleton Copley’s Watson and the Shark, showing the British merchant Brook Watson’s close encounter with a predator in Havana harbor in 1749. This version hangs at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.)

Dublin Seminar to Look at “Living with Disabilities”

The Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife has announced the subject of this year’s conference: “Living with Disabilities in New England, 1630–1930.”

The conference will be held in Deerfield, Massachusetts, on the weekend of 19-21 June 2020. The Dublin Seminar strives to be a meeting place for scholars, students, and committed avocational researchers. Professional development points are available for public school teachers who participate.

The Dublin Seminar is now accepting proposals for papers and presentations at this conference that address the history of people living with disabilities in New England and adjacent areas of New York and Canada from the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries. The principal topic examined by this conference is how children and adults with disabilities experienced disability in everyday life.

Proposals might address the following questions:

• How was disability defined during this period?
• How did gender, race, and class intersect with the experience and meaning of disability?
• What was the relationship between the law and disability?
• How did people with disabilities interact with institutions ranging from religious organizations to state-sponsored hospitals to schools?
• What is the history of disability within the context of military or industrial settings?
• How did people with disabilities interact with material culture and technology, including but not limited to assistive technologies such as artificial limbs and hearing aids; clothing; landscapes and buildings; and service animals?
• What is the relationship between medical history and disability history?

The Seminar encourages papers that reflect interdisciplinary approaches and original research, especially those based on material culture, archaeological artifacts, letters and diaries, vital records, federal and state censuses, as well as newspapers, visual culture, business records, recollections, autobiographies, and public history practice or advocacy at museums, archives, and elsewhere.

The “Living with Disabilities in New England, 1630–1930” conference will consist of approximately seventeen lectures of twenty minutes each. Selected papers will appear as the 2020 Annual Proceedings of the Dublin Seminar to be published about eighteen months after the conference.

To submit a paper proposal for this conference, please submit (as a single email attachment, in Word or as a pdf) a one-page prospectus that describes the paper and its sources and a one-page vita or biography by 10 Mar 2020. Send proposals to dublinseminar@historic-deerfield.org.

Another Watson, Another Shark

Around here, “Watson and the Shark” is the John Singleton Copley painting of Brook Watson’s rescue from a shark in Havana. The Museum of Fine Arts has one of several copies Copley made for Watson.

At English Historical Fiction Authors, Mimi Matthews recently wrote about another shark and another Watson:

On January 1, 1787, some fishermen spied a shark in the [Thames] river and, with much difficulty, captured the creature and drew it into their boat. The shark was alive, but, as [author George Henry] Birch states, “apparently sickly.” The cause of his illness was soon discovered. Upon taking him ashore and cutting him open, the fishermen found within his body a silver watch, chain, and “cornelian” seal. A 1787 edition of the Northampton Mercury reports that they also found:

“…some Pieces of Gold Lace, which were conjectured to have belonged to some young Gentleman, who was swallowed by that voracious Fish.”

On further examination, it was found that the watch was engraved with the maker’s name and number: Henry Watson, London, No. 1369. Mr. Watson lived in Shoreditch and, when applied to for information regarding that particular watch, the Northampton Mercury reports that Mr. Watson revealed that he had:

“…sold the Watch two Years ago to a Mr. Ephraim Thompson, of Whitechapel, as a Present for his Son on going out on his first Voyage (as what is called a Guinea-Pig) on board the ship Polly, Capt. Vane, bound to Coast and Bay.”

In a storm off Falmouth, the Annual Register for 1787 finished the story, “Master Thompson fell overboard, and was no more seen.” But his father bought the shark as a memorial; one newspaper even said that “he calls [the fish] his son’s executor.”

The term “guinea pig” appears as British maritime slang as early as 1767, and a generation later was specified to mean a midshipman in the East India service.

Brook Watson: "worthy and steady friend"?

Last month I discussed Brook Watson (1735-1807), who was born in Boston, lost a leg to a shark in Havana, and went on to a very successful career in London as a merchant and politician. Because he was born in America and had a lot of business there, the British government viewed him as a bridge to the colonial leadership.

In January 1775 Watson sent the Earl of Dartmouth, Secretary of State for the colonies, a handwritten essay recommending how the government should peacefully reform the colonial governments. The secretary’s secretaries noted this as “Mr. Watson’s Thoughts on American Affairs.” In fact, he had copied it from “Thoughts on the dispute between Great Britain and her Colonies,” an essay by Judge William Smith of New York. The author’s brother, Dr. James Smith, had sent a copy to the earl the year before, and Smith himself would send another in July, saying he had written it in 1767.

Around the same time, Watson testified in Parliament against the government’s bill to bar Massachusetts fisherman from the Newfoundland fishing grounds. He spoke for the whole empire’s merchants, who earned a lot from carrying the fish to Britain’s Caribbean colonies. Despite his argument, the bill passed, part of Parliament’s efforts to punish Boston for the Tea Party and general naughtiness.

Watson then sailed for New York, arriving in May 1775 to find that war had broken out. The Patriot party dominated the city at that time, though there were also many Loyalists and men who were genuinely undecided (such as William Smith). Whatever Watson told people convinced them that he sympathized with the Patriots and hoped for a reconciliation between the colonies and Great Britain that would resolve all their problems. He set out for Canada, where he had extensive business.

Later in 1775, a couple of American armies also set out north, planning a quick conquest. One contingent, under Ethan Allen, was captured outside Montreal at the Battle of Longue-Point on 24 Sept 1775. But after that the local militias lost faith in British commander Guy Carleton and disbanded, letting a larger American force under Gen. Richard Montgomery take Montreal unopposed the next month. By then Watson was sailing back to London—but he had left some letters behind.

On 13 Nov 1775, Montgomery wrote to Gen. Philip Schuyler back in New York:

I send some choice letters of that worthy and steady friend of the Colonies, Brook Watson, whose zeal is only to be equalled by his sincerity. You will think them of importance enough, I believe, to be communicated to General Washington and the Congress. Your friend, Mr. William Smith, has been pretty well humbugged by this gentleman.

Montgomery enclosed four captured letters which Watson had written the month before. Among them was one to William Franklin, Loyalist governor of New Jersey (and son of Benjamin Franklin), dated 19 Oct 1775 and describing the results of the Longue-Point battle:

such is the wretched state of this unhappy Province [Quebec], that Colonel Allen, with a few despicable wretches, would have taken this city on the 25th ultimo [i.e., last month], had not its inhabitants marched out to give them battle. They fought, conquered, and thereby saved the Province for a while. Allen and his banditti were mostly taken prisoners. He is now in chains on board the Gaspee. This little action has changed the face of things. The Canadians before were nine tenths for the Bostonians. They are now returned to their duty, many in arms for the King, and the parishes. who had been otherwise, are daily demanding their pardon, and taking arms for the Crown.

Watson actually took charge of conveying Allen to Britain as a prisoner of war; the Vermonter later called him “a man of malicious and cruel disposition.”

Before the end of the war, Watson gained some lucrative military supply contracts through his close relationship with Carleton. In the following decades he retired from business and devoted his full-time talents to politics. (Thumbnail of the one-legged merchant and Lord Mayor courtesy of Britain’s National Portrait Gallery.)

Shark Politics in Parliament

Yesterday’s Boston Globe “Ideas” section featured an article by Prof. Marcus Rediker, author of the upcoming The Slave Ship: A Human History, titled “Slavery: A Shark’s Perspective.”

The article described a 1792 satirical essay by Scottish encyclopedist James Tyler, which Rediker says showed “a dark and daring kind of humor I had never known to exist among abolitionists.” Taking the form of a petition to Parliament, the document asks the government on behalf of “the SHARKS of AFRICA” not to outlaw the slave trade, which provided them with so much food in the form of ill, injured, or suicidal captives.

Thus benefited, as your petitioners are, by this widely extended traffic, a traffic which has never before been molested, it is with the utmost indignation they hear that there are in Britain men, who under the specious plea of humanity, are endeavouring to accomplish its abolition.— But your petitioners trust that this attempt at innovation, this flourishing of the trumpet of liberty, by which “more is meant than meets the ear,” will be effectually frustrated.

Should the lower branch of the legislature be so far infatuated by this new-fangled humanity as seriously to meditate the destruction of this highly beneficial commerce, your petitioners have the firmest reliance on the wisdom and fellow-feeling of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal of Great Britain.

The Boston Globe website supplies an image of the document, and Jack Campin of Edinburgh has transcribed the text. At least three American newspapers reprinted the essay between 1792 and 1807, the last one being The Friend of Salem, Massachusetts.

I wonder if putting this argument into the gaping mouths of sharks had a special resonance because one of the slave trade’s defenders in Parliament had himself famously survived a shark attack. In 1793 Brook Watson (1735-1807) was an Alderman of London. He had grown up in Boston from 1741 until he went to sea as a cabin boy. In 1749 he was swimming in Havana harbor (where, legally, his ship should not have been trading) when a shark bit off his leg. The story of Watson’s injury was well known in London.

During the Parliamentary debates of the 1790s, Watson made much the same argument as the “Sharks of Africa”—that the slave trade so benefited his constituency that the government must not shut it down. Watson also argued that the Newfoundland fishing trade would lose its main market without the enslaved populations of the Caribbean, and put forward an early “positive good” argument for slavery:

He held that those who had brought them from their own country had brought them to happiness, and wound up by telling the House that there could not be a more delightful scene than that presented by the dancing and other amusements of the happy slaves on a well-managed estate.

It seems the “Sharks of Africa” agreed with Watson as much as Watson’s leg agreed with that Cuban shark.

Today’s image shows the painting that Brook Watson commissioned from John Singleton Copley in 1778 of his shark attack. This copy is in the National Gallery in Washington, and part of a very nice online exhibit. There’s another copy at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.