Details
A pair of late 18th century British ship carvings
of female heads, delicately carved with their hair pulled up, believed to have been taken from the gangway pillars of H.M.S. Defiance when she was broken up at Chatham. On later stands.
6 x 3½ in. (15.2 x 8.9 cm.) backplate. (2)

Lot Essay

H.M.S. Defiance was a 74-gun third rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, built by Randall and Co., and launched on 10 December 1783. Her crew mutinied three times, in 1795, 1797, and 1798. She fought at the Battle of Copenhagen on April 2, 1801, the Battle of Cape Finisterre on July 22, 1805, and the Battle of Trafalgar on October 21, 1805 where she captured the Spanish San Juan Nepomuceno and sustained casualties of 17 killed, 53 wounded. After serving as a prison ship at Chatham for four years, she was broken up in 1817.

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