Ships in Bottles and Their Origins in the Late Nineteenth Century

Miniature objects, whether they be netsuke or snuff boxes, have special allure for collectors. Ships in bottles have a similar appeal to the nautical collector and they have the added component of the mystery of how a tall-sparred model of a sailing ship could pass through the narrow neck of a bottle.1 The hobby remains popular: the late Des Newton's demonstrations of ship bottling at Merseyside Maritime Museum was one of its great attractions. His dexterity and quick wit saw him demonstrate his skill before royalty and on TV programmes such as Blue Peter and What's My Line? There have been several books on how to ship bottle – at least nine in English since 1949. In fact, the there have even been cartoons about them, references in novels and even a mention in that popular 1960s radio comedy Round the Horn.2

The origins of the craft are not ususally explored, however. ‘Salt Peter’ suggested that it was ‘a hobby and pastime of seafaring men for centuries’, while John Leonard speculated that ‘it might go back to the late eighteenth century’ and Lauder and Biggs were probably nearer the mark when the suggested the mid-nineteenth century.3 It has also been suggested that there is a link to the ‘God in the bottle’ or American ‘whimsies’ in bottles. The former usually consist of crucifixes with other symbols of the Passion. They seem to have been made mainly in Germany although some north country examples exist.4 Whimsies were fanciful devices often in the form of miniature domestic objects, fans or ‘whirly gigs’ which could be spun round by a knob at the mouth of the bottle.5 There is a link to ships because there is a single example of a Dutch poon dating from about 1800 in the Prins Hendrik Museum, Rotterdam. But the technique is different. The ship was inserted into a wide-mouthed flask and was suspended vertically. The same applies to the God-in-a-bottles and the whimsies and has no resemblance of the folding down technique of inserting a model ship into a horizontal bottle.

An early date such as 1800 for the poon model does not fit with the development of making bottles. Bottles in 1800 were hand blown and more often than not of green or brown glass and not clear glass which was more expensive to manufacture. Glass was also heavily taxed until 1845. Bottles continued to be hand-blown but became of a more standardized shape by the use of moulds into which the molten glass was blown. This was gradually improved by the use of chilled iron moulds in 1866. But this was still largely hand work even though production by a seven-man team could be increased from 40 to 300 dozen bottles a day.6 Ashley's British patent of 1886 used a mould which could form the neck and used compressed air for blowing part of the process. While Ashley's company failed, he had shown the way forward and two other companies bought up his machines and succeeded in making good-quality bottles. This made bottle making a semi-automatic process. The materials used also became cheaper with the introduction of Siemen's regenerative furnace. This made it possible to substitute cheaper soda ash for the more expensive soda. It also economized on fuel and its higher temperatures meant fewer bubbles in the glass. In 1898 the American bottle maker M. J. Owens introduced an experimental machine which led to the entire automation of bottle making.7 Specialized bottles, such as the square bottle for Johnny Walker whisky which was designed to minimize breakages in transit and the special bottle for Haig's Dimple whisky, were popular with sailor ship bottlers because of their short necks. These types of bottle were not introduced until 1860 and 1888. All the ships in bottles I have had a chance to examine are in mass-produced bottles. It is possible the early ones have failed to survive. Nevertheless it seems likely that most if not all ships in bottles were probably made after the introduction of cheaper methods of bottle manufacture.

The models also suggest that they were not made much before 1855. This can be asserted by examining their spars. Unless they are modern models made by hobbyists of earlier types such as eighteenth-century warships, all the surviving sailor-made models appear to be rigged with double-topsails. This innovation was introduced on American ships by R. B. Forbes as early as 1841. But this ‘American system’ was not seen on a British-built ship until 1855 with the completion of the auxiliary ship Royal Charter. It was adopted cautiously by other British shipbuilders in the 1860s and was by no means standard practice until the end of that decade. Likewise 1866 saw the introduction of double top-gallant sails on the Marpesia and the Antiope, and again they were not taken up immediately.8 Given this conservative approach to innovation in the ship's sail plans, you can see that most British-made ships in bottles must date from 1860 or more likely 1870 onwards. There are also other dating techniques. Barques are likely to be later than many ships. This was because as competition from steamers strengthened many sailing ship owners took steps to reduce their running costs. By removing the square canvas on the mizzen mast, you reduced the maintenance cost and more important reduced the number in the crew while suffering only a small decrease in speed. If the model is of a four-masted barque it must date from after 1877. The first British fourmasted barque was the Tweedsdale of 1877.9 If the ship or barque is ‘bald-headed’ that is it has double top-gallant sails and no royals, it must date from after 1887 because its other name was the ‘Jubilee rig’ named after Queen Victoria's Jubilee of that year.

I would also ask the question on how many models were actually made at sea. Unfortunately ordinary sailors neither wrote diaries nor signed their work. Therefore I have had to rely on the memoirs of former apprentice officers. These were usually written after a long and successful career at sea, which again makes them not entirely reliable. However, very few out of the 25 examined mention ships in bottles being made at sea. This is understandable given that this had to be a fair weather hobby. A sailing ship's fo'c'sle was invariably a dark, gloomy, smoke-filled space and any fine work such as model making would have to take place on deck. The availability of suitable bottles was another problem as British mercantile ships were ‘dry’ apart from medicinal rum or brandy. The crew also came aboard more often than not in a drunken state and would have hardly had the presence of mind to bring an empty bottle with them. Rigged waterline models are often referred to but not ships in bottles. These were often made by the Scandinavians aboard, particularly the Russian Finns. The one definite reference was by Sir James Bisset on the County of Pembroke:

One of our sailors throughout the voyage had been working in the dog watches putting a ship into a bottle, a task it had taken twelve months to complete. With endless patience he had built a ship in miniature from pieces of wood whittled with his jackknife, and rigged her correctly with all sails to the royals on her three masts using thin tarred twine for rigging and carefully carved tiny pieces of wood for blocks and tackles. There was nothing omitted. She was complete with deckhouses, wheel, binnacle, capstans, anchors, bitts even belaying pins in the rails.

She was painted and varnished and perfect. When we arrived at Portland, the old seaman obtained a narrow-necked bottle, and some putty and green colouring matter for the ‘sea’. After rubbing the colour into the putty, he ran it into the bottle lying on its side. He cut the masts off short at the deck and hinged them so that whole top hamper lay down flat in a fore-and-aft direction. He inserted the ship stern first, through the neck of the bottle, and manoeuvred her on the sea of green putty into a central position. When she was firmly settled there, he gently pulled on fine threads attached to the masts and the yards and passing through the neck of the bottle. With these threads he raised the masts to a vertical position and trimmed the yards horizontally. Hey presto! A ship in a bottle! He decorated the cork and the neck of the bottle with cunningly worked twine plaiting known as cross-pointing and brightened this up with a few touches of paint.

What are you going to do with her? I asked. Sell her o'course! How much do you want for her? Two pounds of plug tobacco10

And that was how most ships in bottle ended up sold in waterside pubs and chandleries for a few shillings or bartered for beer and tobacco. In this case Bisset was able to persuade the master to let him have the price in tobacco on credit from the slop chest and thus he became the proud owner of this masterpiece.

It was not just deep-sea sailors that made ships in bottles. Retired seafarers also made them ashore. The late ‘Jo’ Dashwood-Howard amassed a large collection of ships in bottles which amounted to over 70 when his descendants kindly donated his collection to Merseyside Maritime Museum in 2001. Besides building his own models, he bought models from Liverpool public houses (pubs) while serving as a deck officer with Tho. & Jno. Brocklebank. In 1928 he bought a ship in a bottle in Great Yarmouth and subsequently discovered it was made by Bert Kennett, a lightshipman. Lightship keepers were well placed to make models because of their long spells at sea. In 1933 he bought one of the St Nicholas light vessel from Kennett on the Cockle light ships for 5 shillings.11 So, it was not just deep-sea sailors who made ships in bottles. They could also be made by retired seafarers like Dashwood-Howard and by fishermen. There was at least one fisherman ship bottler at Sheringham, Norfolk at work before the Second World War. George Scales, a retired fisherman of Filey recalled:

The interest in model ship building mainly sprang from ‘bad-weather’ days when it was too rough to fish, and the young men used to gather at the boat-builder's shed on the coble landing and would while away the time carving out odd bits of wood whilst they were watching the boat builder at work. Ships in bottles were a favourite pastime, as the materials were readily to hand.12

None of the above explains the origin of the ship in a bottle. But clearly its links with other types of ‘bottled’ objects is tenuous in terms of date and technique. The material evidence of the bottles and their model ships suggest that they must have been first made around 1860 at the very earliest.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00253359.2013.767629

© The Society for Nautical Research

Notes

1 The British and American technique is to make masts and spars that can folded down and swivelled so that they can pass through the neck. Then extended forestays are used to draw up the masts. These are glued to the bowsprit and cut off. There is also a European technique of building the hull in sections and rigging the masts in the bottle.

2 Mitford, Love in a Cold Climate, 128, ‘The safes … were full of treasure, carved nut, a ship in a bottle etc.’; Round the Horne Jules and Sandy sketch, ‘You'd be amazed at what Jock could do with a piece of wood and a bottle.’

3 ‘Salt Peter’, Sailor Sam's Secret, 1; Leonard, Ships in Bottles; Lauder and Biggs, Ships in Bottles, 1.

4 Brears, North Country Folk Art, 70–3.

5 Norton, Sailor's Folk Art under Glass, 25.

6 Meigh, Development of the Automatic Glass Bottle Machine, 2.

7 Derry and Williams, Short History of Technology, 597–8.

8 MacGregor, Fast Sailing Ships, 149–50.

9 Bowness, The Four-masted Barque, 1.

10 Bisset, Sail Ho!, 147–8.

12 G. Scales pers. comm., 26 Feb., 1989.

11 Kennett made many other models which are distinguished by their meticulous finish. I am proud to own one, a four-masted barque, which my late mother bought at East Dereham, Norfolk in about 1950. She had no particular interest in the sea yet this fine model intrigued her enough to buy it.