A Catchpenny Conundrum
Posted: Fri Nov 29, 2019 4:29 pm
My wife is an art historian, and has come across a catchpenny print with engravings of six 18th century British warships, from a series published during the 1780s and 1790s. They are fairly crude images, certainly not meant to be accurate ship-portraits, but they are named as Prudent, Marlborough, Salisbury, Portland, Ardent, and Egmont. All are two-deckers; Salisbury is rather smaller than the others, with fewer guns; the other five look pretty similar to each other.
What she'd like to know is, is there any factor that links these six ships? We wondered if they were all Thames built, as the print is by a London firm and also includes the Lord Mayor of London's barge, but that doesn't seem to be the case looking at ship histories on the main site. I thought that it might make a riddle for the experts here to mull over and see if they can come up with a connection.
What she'd like to know is, is there any factor that links these six ships? We wondered if they were all Thames built, as the print is by a London firm and also includes the Lord Mayor of London's barge, but that doesn't seem to be the case looking at ship histories on the main site. I thought that it might make a riddle for the experts here to mull over and see if they can come up with a connection.