“WE don’t hang wives.” Thus spake the Trustees of the National Maritime Museum (NMM), London, in the late 1930s, taking the view that seafaring was an essentially masculine occupation. Says Pieter van der Merwe of the NMM, “Whenever I see Portrait of an Unknown Lady coming up for auction, I often wonder whether she’s a separated naval wife.”
This policy accounts for the loss from view of the portrait of Mrs Lapenotiere, originally paired, as was frequently the custom, with her husband Captain John Richards Lapenotiere, Royal Navy, both portraits being offered to the NMM by a descendant, Mrs Cranstoun of Tasmania, in 1939. There’s a treasure hunt opportunity here — Mrs Lapenotiere is believed to have been offered on to another relative, a Mrs Mills of Fulmer, Buckinghamshire.
Who was Lapenotiere and what did he do? As a 35-year-old lieutenant, he was captain of the topsail schooner Pickle at the Battle of Trafalgar and was selected by Admiral Collingwood to carry home his dispatch, reporting the glorious victory over the combined French and Spanish fleets but also “the ever-to-be-lamented death of Vice-Admiral Lord Viscount Nelson”. A fast sailer, Pickle reached Falmouth on November 4, 1805, and her captain the Admiralty after a hurried 37-hour journey by post-chaise, changing horses 21 times.
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Lapenotiere’s portrait is, to be frank, not a distinguished artwork. Painted about 1811 by an unknown artist, it shows the subject wearing the uniform of a post-captain of under three years’ seniority, with his hand on the hilt of the hundred-guinea sword awarded to him after Trafalgar. It is the only portrait of this officer, a highly competent seaman who learnt his trade under the much traduced Captain Bligh during his better-found and less mutinous second voyage to garner Tahitian breadfruit trees in 1791. Never previously displayed, it is sorely in need of the restoration now being provided by the NMM.
His journey is to be re-enacted this summer by the New Trafalgar Dispatch commemorative group. Representing the Pickle, the Jubilee Sailing Trust’s vessel Lord Nelson will arrive at Falmouth from Cádiz on August 4.
Thereafter a specially constructed post-chaise with young naval officers representing Lapenotiere will progress along the posting route, visiting as many of the post-houses as still exist and tracing the streets of the towns and villages on the way. The route — the “Trafalgar Way” — will be marked by permanent plaques. Ordnance Survey has produced for sale a stunning map which, amongst a mass of other detail, also shows Nelson’s route from Merton to Portsmouth and his final walk to board the cutter that took him to his flagship, the Victory, in Spithead.
This portrait will be on view in the Royal Naval Museum during the International Festival of the Sea in Portsmouth Dockyard from this Thursday to July 2; at the National Maritime Museum, Cornwall, at Falmouth from August 3 to 5; as a Devon man, he’ll feature in the Exeter Expects exhibition from August 8 to 19; then the Dorset County Museum until September 6 when it will be at the final presentation of the New Trafalgar Dispatch in the Admiralty Building to the Permanent Under Secretary of the Ministry of Defence and the First Sea Lord on September 8.
His sword will feature in the NMM’s major exhibition Nelson and Napoleon which opens on July 7.
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All that is needed is for someone to find his wife.