East Sails West: The Voyage of the Keying, 1846–1855

Appendix: The Images of the Keying

There are thirteen images of the Keying at present known to the record. This count excludes the four limned images on the seven designs of white metal and brass commemorative medals, which would appear to borrow heavily from the images published as engravings in popular magazines, with only minor adjustments . It also excludes the interior and detailed views that appeared either in the Description or in popular illustrated magazines like The Illustrated London News, The Pictorial Times and the Graphic. In the approximate order of creation, the thirteen images are: • The Chinese Junk “Keying”, Nathaniel Currier, New York, 1847 • The Great Chinese Junk Now on Her Voyage to England, Edmund Evans, The Pictorial Times, 1847 • Two gouaches of the Keying, unknown Chinese artist, c. 1847 • Chinese Junk Keying, Rock & Co., London, c. 1848 • The Chinese Junk Keying, Captain Kellett, Rock Brothers & Payne, London, 1848 • The Chinese Junk “Keying”, B. Foster, The Illustrated London News, 1848 • The Keying, from the Description, unknown artist, J. Such, London, 1848 • The Junk Keying Approaching England, unknown artist, (probably London), c. 1848 • Keying, unknown artist, Vickers, London, c. 1848 • Chinese Junk Keying in a Gale, Stephen Dadd Skillett, London, 1848/49 • Junk Keying in New York Harbour from Italia, Samuel Waugh, New York, 1853 • The Chinese Junk, J. Greenaway, Old & New London, vol. 3, London, 1878 Appendix: The Images of the Keying Ten of the images date from the ship’s stay in London, one from between the New York stay and the arrival in London, and two from the stay in New York. One of the latter, by Nathaniel Currier (1813–88), is the earliest datable image and one which shows the least signs of any debts to any other of the images. It is for this reason, if no other, that the Currier image is one of the best guides we have of the Keying’s conformity. In 1835 Nathaniel Currier started his own publishing company in New York and was soon publishing what at the time were innovative lithographs of current events. Whilst Currier was originally the artist of the images he published and appears to have drawn the Keying, in later years the firm used the work of many well-known contemporary American artists.1 ItwouldappearthatNathanielCurrierhadnothingtogoonbutwhathecould see with his own eyes. The result is therefore the nearest depiction we have of the Keying that seems to tally with the shapes shown in the earliest photographs of junks of the type the Keying is most likely to have been. Perhaps as indicative is the care with which Currier has shown the irregularities of the Keying’s mainmast—a matter specifically commented on in the Description. He is the only artist to do so. The second of the New York images, dating from some six years later, was painted by the American artist Samuel Waugh around 1853. It appears entirely derivative. Interestingly, a comparison suggests that the derivation was not from Currier’s image, but almost certainly from one of the London images—probably the most widely disseminated one. This appeared in The Illustrated London News on 1 April 1848. We shall return to Waugh below. A New York period image, though actually done in London and much earlier than Waugh’s, is the best example of what we may call ‘informed fantasy’, borrowing from known images of Chinese vessels and a verbal description, but connecting in no known way to the actual junk. This image appeared using a story filed in New York, in a popular British weekly magazine, The Pictorial Times.2 The image, the next in sequence and the first by a British artist, is a perfect example of the problem we are considering. It is evidently based upon existing western images of junks. There was probably some feed from America—notice theflagoftheUnitedStatesbeingflownasacourtesyflagattheforemast—though 244 Appendix: The Images of the Keying almost certainly this was not Currier’s image. Otherwise the image is from the artist’s imagination. Who he was we do not know, although we do know the engraving was done by the very young Edmund Evans, who was completing his apprenticeship to the great Ebenezer Landells—who we shall meet again—at the time. The sails are effectively European in form, since they are shown as gaff sails connected to the mast at the luff, or forward side, by parrels (or loops of rope). To compound the errors, each sail is shown as being controlled by a single...