Show fantastic FaTata figures will T decorate te new steamers figureheads Figure heads are coming back into fashion washington D C are ships fig ure heads coming back into fashion A norwegian line plying between oslo and antwerp has lately revived this ancient form of decoration for two of its new ships one the bretagne or brittany carries at her bow the majestic figure of a barefoot lady in a swing skirt personifying the french province of the same name the other the bayard bears an armored chevalier on whose unfurled standard appear the words sans et sans Re to frighten their enemies propitiate their gods or merely to beautify the ships they loved sailors COWBOY LOU q 7 N alj I 1 ka not jack dalton but lou gehrig iron man slugger 6 of the new york yankees is shown above as he ap pears in his first picture raw hide lou portrays a two fisted westerner hot on the trail of a gang of cattle thieves and while his guns are cooling off gehrig rolls him self a sm smoke oke one handed through the ages have set fantastic heroic and a nd sometimes comic creations at the prows of sea roving c aft says the national geographic society subjects ranged all the way from crude native deities and dragons to plump victorian maids and knights on horseback one of the S simplest decorations was that used by early egypt egyptians fians and chine chinese se who painted two eyes on the stem of their boats many elaborate wood carvings and bronze castings later bore witness bitne SS to painstaking craftsmanship of experts trained for decades in the art one fam famous ous english family the th e hellmers Hell carved ships figureheads figure heads beadE for years another great name in the business grinling gibbons employed was that of by charles charle s II 11 and onetime one time assistant to sir chris christopher copher wren some early types curving out from the hull high bow and stern both above the sea craft offered a conspicuous of primitive natural point for the first and adornment carved car ved forms of ship viking long ships and siamese snake boats built like dragons are examples of the earliest type As the shape of vessels c hanged changed a separate figurehead in wood or other materials often took the place of simple decoration of the stem itself gradually typical figureheads figure heads on ships of various nations began to appear on the prow of phoeni ceans boats was often displayed the horses head symbol of speed the romans followed the lion and crocodile that once represented tutelary deities of mountain and river with busts of their distinguished warriors in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries english and dutch featured their national emblems of t the he lion while spaniards liked their craft headed by the figures of their favorite saints an era of expanding merchant shi shipping p ping the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were prolific ones for american figureheads figure heads at the prows of yankee clippers frigates and brigantines brig antines of war heroic sized females in flowing robes naval heroes in uniform and famous american statesmen in ordinary street clothes plowed through walls of spray along with conventional images of neptune with his trident and classical goddesses of the sea elaborate and unwieldy no country however maintained more mor e interest in S ships ip fig ure heads than the england of queen elizabeth onward so elaborate a and nd unwieldy was some of this decoration that in the words of sir walter raleigh the ocean fairly groaned from their weight an example was that of the british sovereign of the seas with a mass of carving on her prow representing king edgar mounted on horseback and trampling on six subject kings and beyond it a figure of cupid riding a lion eventually british craftsmen developed their art to include carvings of characters from shakes peare and scott the knights of the round table american indians chinese mandarins witches and 9 goblins they came to represent not only imaginary characters but actual persons from public life and members of ship owners families from time to time the us use e of the figurehead was banished or limited in 1785 france suppressed such decoration for state shipping ten years later the british admiralty ordered elaborate ornamentation of ships discontinued but the habit died hard up to the end of sail superstitious men of the sea declared that a boat without a figurehead was haunted among commercial lines in in general there is an increasing tendency to use some sort of design on their ships to symbolize the name of the company present day warships too often carry a badge or escutcheon on their bows |