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Show IN ANCIENT CUSTOM. FIGURE-HEADS OF FAMOUS OLD MEN-OF-WAR. I'lie Custom Rapidly Brine Out In the Vtfiaela of the Laat Years of the Mneteeuth CenturrOnr Nr.vy Fifty 'eara AftO. The placing of figure-heads under the iowsprits of ships appears to be a custom cus-tom alike ancient and honorable. Ovid tells us that the vessel io which he was -limed to his place of exile bore a bust if Minerva under the bow. The ship that rescued St. Paul from the island of Melita bore a double image of Castor Cas-tor aud Pollux. The Carthagenian merchant ships had their crocodile, the Punic cruisers (heir figure of Baal, the Norsemen and Danes their dragons and erpents. The famous English ship Terrible carried a ghHStly skeleton at its prow, and the French privateer Sur-.on Sur-.on f, the ten or of the Indian seas io the Napoleonic war, adorned the bows )t his famous rrusier, the Revenant, with the figure of a corpse in the act :f casting: off its shroud. When the loop-of-war Pearl, commanded by . Lieutenant llavnard. of the navy of 1 spicuous In the eyes of the world. Another figure head at the Naval Academy, and oneabout which clusters a more lustrous history, is that of the old Constitution. This is a life-size figure of President Jackson, firm and erect, his left hand thrust in his coat, while in his right he carries a scroll, presumably the Constitution. This figure-head was carved at Itoston in 1834. and placed on the vessel's bow in the second term of Jackson's administration, adminis-tration, just after the ship returned from her famous cruise of sixteen months, and tlfty-two thousand three hundred and seventy-nine miles. There eeems to have been just as many off en sive partisans then as now, for instantly the enemies of the administration ba-pan ba-pan to clamor for the removal of the President's figure from the bows of the ship made glorious bv the captures of the Guerriere, the Fava, the Pictou, the Cyane, and the Levant. No attention was paid to these demands, de-mands, and one fine morning, two months later, the officers in command were horrified to find the President's figure decapitated. Whereupou the Boston Courier of July 4, lt84, said: "It appears that during the night of Wednesday, the head of this wooden image was sawed off bv some person or persons unknown. It is a rather mysterious mys-terious affair. The Constitution liesat the navy yard, between two seventy-fours, seventy-fours, and it is understood that a guard, or watch, is continually kept on board. It rcems impossible that the deed could have been executed without discovery, notwithstanding that the night was dark and rainy. The head which had been sawed from its trunk, it is said, was at least twenty feet above the surface of the water. It is the opinion of several intelligent men, who examined exam-ined the premises yesterday, that the perpetrators must have gone to their work through the navy yard. "It was reported last evening that Commodore Elliott hud offered one thousand dollars for the person or persons per-sons who committed the deed." The President's headless trunk adorned the Constitution's bows for a year longer, when the frigate was brought to New York. Here, on Saturday Sat-urday afternoon, March 14, the head carved by Messrs. Dodge & Hons was j replaced on the trunk representing I President Jackson on the bow of the frigate Constitution. The whole affair had been managed with great care and secrecy. The man who cut off the President's head was exposed ; three years later in a most unexpected manner. In one of the New York City courts there was an action of assault and battery in which Samuel W. Dewey was plaintiff' and Joseph Fay and Edward Ed-ward II. Dixon defendants. In the course of the evidence, one of the witnesses wit-nesses stated that Dewey, who, it seems, was a captain, informed him on the evening of the ns-anlt that he (Dewey) cut off the figure-head of the frigate Constitution. Captain Dewey, who was a native of Cape Cod, afterward after-ward presented the head to the Secretary Secre-tary of the Navy, for which lie was given a written obligation that he would never be prosecuted for the offense of-fense he had committed. Another Naval Academy relic of a noble oldb attle-ship is the figure-head FIGURE-HEAD OF THE OLD CNITED STATES UNK-OF-BATTLE SHIP "DELAWARE." George II., sailed into Port Royal after its victory over the redoubtable pirate Blackboard, it carried under its bow-prita bow-prita reulistic ligure-head representing represent-ing the head of the famous buccaneer himself as it was struck off his body by Mnynard's sword. ' The custom of decorating the bow I wiih something emblematic of the ship's name or purpose is one that is rapidly dying out in the vessels of the last year-of the nineteenth century. Particularly is this true in the ships of the United States navy, where the ram bow prevents t lie use of anything more than a simple scroll, or, as in the case of the Yorktown. a plain, unadorned shield. Our navy fifty years ago, however, then famous among the navies of the world, possessed pos-sessed an array of figure-heads the like of which had never been seen in warships war-ships before or since. A very interesting interest-ing collection of these figure-heads is now to be seen at the . United States Naval Academy nt Annapolis, Md. At the close of each month, when the cadets march from their quarters to the dreaded examination rooms, there to undergo tests for bet ter or worse, their route passes under the shadow of a massive Indian warrior in wood, the figure-head of the old liue-of battle ship Delaware. It is mounted near the old mess-hall, on a pedestal eight feet high, and the head towers fully III teen feet above the ground. For many years this chieftain has been worshiped by the midshipmen as the patron saint of satisfactory averages, the attainment of which depends, according to un unbroken un-broken chain of academy legend, upon the favor or disfavor of his mute, though royal, wooden Inuianship. So, when the days for the examination come around, with a consDicuous disregard disre-gard of the second commandment, each middy, as he marches to his trails, doffs his cap to the god, and thereafter his mind rests easy in the assiiranco that he has faithfully invoked the blessing FIOl'ItE-HKAD OF THE BK1TISH LION. of the Franklin, eighty-six guns, a ship whose cruise in the Slediterreanean in 1817, as the flag-ship of Commodore Charles Stewart, made her famous in the eyes of the European ship-builders, They pronounced her the finest model in Hie world, and her lines were embodied em-bodied in all the European types of marine architecture for the next quarter quar-ter of a century. The ilgure-head which now survives this gallant man-of-war is a large bust of Franklin bare headed, with long, flowing hair. , A splendid bust of Minerva, six feet high, forms another interesting figure of a collection of figure-heads at the Naval Academy, and commemorates as well an epoch in naval history made glorious by the triumphs of the frigate United States under the gallant Decatur. Deca-tur. This figure-head adorned the prow of the old Macedonian when she wit captured from the French by the English. En-glish. The bust was very much worn, and defaced when taken from the Macedonian Mace-donian at the time of her capture by the United States in 1812, and for this reason it is presumed that the relic is more than a hundred years old. When the ill-fated Macedonian was taken to England by her first captors, the figure of the British lion was carved by a j sailor to take the honored place at the j bow then occupied by the classio Minerva. The lion was completed, but ' before it could be put into place hostil- ities between England and America called the ship into action. When the Macedonian struck her colors to the guns of the United States, Decatur and his men found the rarved ''on in the captain's cabin, and i .is now an interesting inter-esting feature of the Naval academy collection. of the idol of his professional ancestors. ances-tors. For years nnd vears the big white Indian In-dian has gazeJ intently across the parade ground, receiving the obeisant salutations of its subjects with only a stony stare. Its massive head, witli its scalp-lock, is thrown well aloft, and crowned by four long feathers. There is a quiver filled with arrows at its back, aud round its waist there is a belt, carrying a scalping-knife, tomahawk, toma-hawk, and pipe. Altogether the big chief is a most imposing personage. Although Marrvat's gunner is made to tell Peter Simple that ho "never knew a vessel with u liddle-beud to do anything," and although the figurehead figure-head is gradually disappearing from the later-day navies, there would seem I to be something very appropriate in j 1 riCIUBE HEAD OF THE "COSSTITCTION"; A LIFE SIZE FIOCISE OF PRESIDENT PRESI-DENT JACKSO.V. cresting the prow of that famous old 84-gun ship, the Delaware, with the splendid head or a tribal chief. The Delaware was built at Gosport in 1817, and launched in 1820, and for a quarter of a century she cruised in all the waters of the" globe as the flag-ship of Commodores Crane, Patterson, and Morria, Those were the days when the 1 American navy first began to earn the j renown that afterward made it coo- |