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DESCRIPTION:
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America was nominally neutral in the Napoleonic Wars but resented the Royal Navy’s harrying of her merchant ships to find British deserters and sometimes to impress American sailors. In June 1812 President James Madison declared war and until the spring of 1815 Britain was once more fighting her former colonists, a dangerous diversion from the task of beating Napoleon. The American Navy had developed surprisingly quickly and the British, who were not used to being beaten at sea, were surprised to be bested in a number of single-ship actions, such as the taking of the Java by the heavy frigate USS Constitution off Brazil in December 1812.
The USS Rattlesnake was another such ship which harried merchantmen in Atlantic waters. She was a 14-gun, 278 ton brig built as a privateer in Medford, Massachusetts and bought by the US Navy at Medford in 1813. (Curiously enough, Dawson depicts her with three masts). She sailed from Portsmouth, New Hampshire on 10th January 1814 under the command of Master Commandant John O Creighton and in company with Enterprise cruised the Caribbean. The ships took three prizes before being forced apart on 25th February by a more heavily gunned British ship.
Rattlesnake put into Wilmington, North Carolina on 9th March and continued her predatory operations in northern waters. On 22nd June, under the command of Lieutenant James Renshaw, she was chased by the Royal Navy’s new, 60-gun Leander. Rattlesnake jettisoned all but two of her guns during the long pursuit but was finally captured off Cape Sable, Nova Scotia.
MONTAGUE DAWSON, RSMA, FRSA
Chiswick 1895 - 1973 Midhurst, Sussex
Montague Dawson was the son of a keen yachtsman and the grandson of the marine painter Henry Dawson (1811-1878). Much of his childhood was spent on Southampton Water where he was able to indulge his interest in the study of ships. For a brief period around 1910 Dawson worked for a commercial art studio in London, but with the outbreak of the First World War he joined the Royal Navy. Whilst serving with the Navy in Falmouth he met Charles Napier Hemy (1841-1917), who considerably influenced his work. Dawson was present at the final surrender of the German Grand Fleet and many of his illustrations depicting the event were published in the Sphere.
After the War, Dawson established himself as a professional marine artist, concentrating on historical subjects and portraits of deep-water sailing ships often in stiff breeze or on high seas. During the Second World War, he was employed as a war artist and again worked for the Sphere. Dawson exhibited regularly at the Royal Society of Marine Artists, of which he became a member, from 1946 to 1964, and occasionally at the Royal Academy between 1917 and 1936. By the 1930s he was considered one of the greatest living marine artists, whose patrons included two American Presidents, Dwight D Eisenhower and Lyndon B Johnson, as well as the British Royal Family.
The work of Montague Dawson is represented in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich and the Royal Naval Museum, Portsmouth.
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