Lot 433: John Cleveley, the Elder (c.1712-1777)

The Luxborough Galley on fire, 25 th June 1727; The Luxborough Galley burnt to the water; The yawl of the Luxborough Galley ; The yawl with lowered sail, in preparation for a storm; and The yawl of the Luxborough Galley arriving amongst fishing boats off Newfoundland, 7 th July, 1727 three signed with initials and dated 'J.C. 1759' (lower left) oil on canvas 191/2 x 251/2 in. (50 x 65 cm.) a set of five (5) NOTES This fascinating set of five paintings by John Cleveley the Elder depicts the dramatic loss (by fire, in the North Atlantic) of the Luxborough Galley on 25 th June 1727 and the subsequent nightmarish voyage of the survivors, in the ship's yawl, to Newfoundland where they arrived in an exhausted state on 7 th July. The whole sequence of events was carefully recorded in a diary kept by the ship's surgeon Thomas Scrimsour, himself one of the survivors, which includes a particularly harrowing and gruesome account of the cannibalism to which the survivors were reduced in order to keep themselves alive pending their deliverance. A similar set of six paintings, including an additional work showing "the Luxborough Galley burnt nearly to the water", dated 1760 was once in the Greenwich Hospital Collection and is now held in the National Collection at Greenwich (see Concise Catalogue of Oil Paintings in the National Maritime Museum, page 125, nos. BHC 2385-9 and 2391). Four of the paintings are broadly similar to those offered here whilst the first in the sequence, showing the Luxborough Galley on fire, portrays a stern view of the stricken vessel compared to the bow view in this catalogue. Scrimsour's account of the disaster records the events that led to the fire. On 23 r d May 1727, the ship was set on a course from Jamaica. It was positioned in the latitude of 41.45 N and in the longitude of 20 E, off Crooked Island, when two ship's boys set fire to the Galley by putting a candle to a spillage on the deck which "burned some time before it was perceived, as the boys were too much intimidated to discover it themselves, having tried all possible means to distinguish [ sic ] the fire in vain." Fifteen men perished, the remainder hoisted out the ship's yawl and twenty-three men and boys escaped from the burning hulk." On the third day, viz the 28 th, as kind providence had hitherto wonderfully preserved us, we began to contrive means how to make a sail, which we did in the following manner. We took to pieces three men's frocks and a shirt, and with a sail-needle and twine, which we found in one of the black boy's pockets, we made shifts to sew them together which answered tolerably well." Having erected the makeshift sail on a broken oar that they found in the yawl, they set a course by the sun and the Captain's watch, heading north to Newfoundland. As the voyage progressed several members of the crew died, including the boy that started the fire. "The weather now proved so foggy that it deprived us all day of the sight of the sun, and of the moon and the stars by night. We tried frequently to halloo as loud as we could in the hopes of being heard by some ship. In the daytime our deluded fancies often imagined ships so plain to us, that we have halloo'd out to them a long time before we have been undeceived; and in the night by the same delusion, we thought we heard men talk, bells ringing, dogs bark, cocks crow etc." By the seventh day the numbers on the yawl had been reduced to twelve and a storm blew in from the east "and the sea running high, we scudded right before it with our small sail about half-down, expecting at every moment to be swallowed up by the waves." Of the twenty-three men and boys that escaped from the burning wreck, only seven were to survive and they did so by eating and drinking anything that came to hand, in the end having to resort to cannibalism. "At length we were obliged by inexpressible hunger and thirst, to eat parts of the bodies of six men, and drink the blood of four...a little food sufficing us, and finding the flesh very disagreeable we confined ourselves to the hearts only. Finding ourselves now perishing with thirst, we were reduced to the melancholy, distressful, horrid act, of cutting the throats of our companions an hour or two after they were dead, to procure their blood, which we caught in a pewter basin: each man producing about a quart." Rescue came on 7 th July when a group of fishing boats spotted the yawl off Newfoundland. The boat in which they had made their escape was only 15ft. long, 5ft. 3ins. broad and 2ft. 3ins. deep, and in this, they had covered a distance of 100 leagues (300 miles). After they had been rescued the Captain, who had been speechless for 36 hours, died, whereupon he was buried with all the honours that could be conferred upon him.