146 - A CONTEMPORARY CARPENTER'S MODEL OF THE 20-GUN 'SPHYNX'-CLASS SHIP CAMILLA, ORIGINALLY BUILT IN 1776 AND MODELLED POST-1801

A CONTEMPORARY CARPENTER'S MODEL OF THE 20-GUN 'SPHYNX'-CLASS SHIP CAMILLA, ORIGINALLY BUILT IN 1776 AND MODELLED POST-1801 the 36in. carved and painted hull with polychrome female figurehead, stern with five windows, stern gallery and Union flag carved to centre, decorated catheads with brass anchors with bound wooden stocks, chain plates with deadeyes, red-lined gun ports, plain red-painted decks with details including coiled ropes, stovepipe, bitts, belfry, gratings, railings, capstan, eight-spoke helm, bound masts with standing and running rigging with blocks with spools, yards, booms and other details, mounted on two raised brass crutches secured to display base within glazed floor-standing bow-ended display case with hinged access doors with catches, overall -- 66 x 72 x 26in. (167.5 x 183 x 66cm.) Ordered in 1773 and built at Chatham Dockyard, Camilla, 433 tons , was one of the ten 'Sphinx'-class sixth rates each mounting twenty guns and measuring 108 feet in length with a 30 foot beam. Launched on 20 th April 1776 and commissioned for sea the next month, she proved herself a very useful addition to the fleet during two major conflicts. First ordered to North America, where the colonial War of Independence was already underway, she soon acquitted herself well by taking the U.S. privateer Independence on 27 th October [1776]. Later, under Captain Sir George Collier, she took part in the Penobscot operations in July and August 1779, and then took a second U.S. privateer, the Revenge, on 13 th October [1779]. After participating in the operations off Charleston (February - May 1780), she returned home to join the Downs Squadron in 1781 until paid off that November. Refitted and re-coppered at Chatham from July 1782 to January 1783, she was recommissioned and ordered to Jamaica until brought home and paid off again in December 1787. Recommissioned in 1794, she served in Strachan’s Squadron until 1800 when she went to Newfoundland where she remained for several years. Back in Home Waters, in company with the Goliath, she helped take the 16-gun La Faune in the Channel on 16 th August 1805, she was then sent to the Leeward Islands before returning to the North Sea to assist with the Walcheren operations in 1809, after which she was paid off for the last time. Thereafter laid up in Ordinary at Sheerness, she was used first as a floating breakwater and then as a Receiving Ship from 1814 to 1825, when she was finally “laid aground” until sold for scrapping in 1831. Top glass cracked; Some apparent restoration to elements of rigging but mostly original; right side rudder chain detached.