The American merchantman Ulysses passing Fort St. Jean as she enters the old harbour at Marseilles, 23rd March 1804

The three-masted U.S. merchantman Ulysses was built at Haverhill, Massachusetts, in 1798 and owned by William "Billy" Gray of Salem. Measured at 340 tons, she was 100= feet in length with a 28 foot beam and, early in 1804, brought fame and recognition to her then commander, William Mugford, on the occasion of her near loss in a severe North Atlantic gale on 1st February. Apart from serious damage to the ship's spars and rigging, the vessel also had her rudder swept clean away and Captain Mugford, having first saved his ship from foundering, then found himself without any means of steering her battered hulk towards land. Designing and fashioning an "ingenious jury rudder", he subsequently brought the ship safely into port and was rewarded with a gold medal from the American Philosophical Society at Philadelphia. Another version of this work, together with two others depicting both the storm and the jury rudder, are held in the Peabody Essex Museum Collection at Salem (see Marine Paintings & Drawings in the Peabody Museum, M.V. & Dorothy Brewington, Salem, 1968, p. 281, nos. 1169-71 - all the bequest of Henry Mugford, 1899).