Lot 459: James Fulton Pringle (1789-1847)

H.M. frigate Phoenix leaving St. Helena with Jamestown off her stern signed and inscribed 'J. Pringle. Sydenham' (lower left) oil on canvas 301/2 x 481/2 in. (77.4 x 123.2 cm.) NOTES Phoenix was an ancient name in the Royal Navy and the tenth ship to bear it was a frigate of 36 guns laid down in August 1781 to replace her namesake lost in the great West Indian hurricane of October 1780. The new vessel, one of the "Perseverance" class, was built in Parsons' Yard at Bursledon, Southampton, and launched on 15 th July 1783. By this time, the American War of Independence was effectively over and it was ten years before her active service began in earnest with the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars in 1793. During this conflict, she was responsible for the capture of several enemy ships including the Dutch frigate Argo, on 12 th May 1796, north of the Texel, an action which also resulted in the recapture of the Duke of York, an English merchantman which the Dutch had taken earlier as a prize. More famously, on 10 th August 1805, she captured the French 44-gun frigate Didon west of Cape Finisterre in a duel which even saw the men from Phoenix's sickberth pressed into service against the larger adversary. Before the War began however, her first taste of action had been off Mangalore, on the west coast of India, where she had taken the French Resolue in a skirmish on 19 th November 1791. It seems probable that the incident depicted here dates from an undoubted call at St. Helena which she would have made whilst on her way to or from Indian waters in the last years of peace. In the event, she survived the lengthy French Wars only to be lost in a violent storm off Smyrna, in the Aegean, on 20 th February 1816 whilst under the command of Captain Charles Austen, the younger brother of the novelist Jane Austen.