Stern Decoration of the Royal Charles

...; Admiraliteit van de Maze (Admiralty of Rotterdam), Hellevoetsluis, 1673;¹¹J.C.J. de Jonge, Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche zeewezen, 5 vols., Haarlem 1858-62, vol. 2, 1859, p. 765. Rijkswerf (Navy dockyard) Rotterdam, early nineteenth century;²²J.M. Obreen, Catalogus der verzameling modellen van het Departement van Marine, The Hague 1858, p. 46. Ministerie van Marine (Department of the Navy), The Hague, 1855;³³Ibid. transferred to the museum, 1883

ObjectNumber: NG-MC-239

Polychromed and carved stern decoration representing the Stuart coat of arms, supported by a crowned lion to port and a shackled unicorn to starboard.

The English 100-gun ship Naseby was built in 1655. The ship was named to commemorate Oliver Cromwell’s decisive land victory against royalist troops near the village of Naseby ten years earlier. At the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 the ship was renamed The Royal Charles when it brought Prince Charles Stuart from Scheveningen back to England to be crowned King of England, receiving this decoration shortly afterwards. The Royal Charles served as the English flagship in several battles against the Dutch during the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665-67).

In June 1667, when Michiel Adriaensz de Ruyter and Cornelis de Witt undertook an expedition to the River Medway to destroy the fleet at anchor near Chatham,⁴⁴Many objects, including paintings, drawings and literature, relate to the Raid on the Medway and the capture of the Royal Charles, far too many to list here. For an overview of the objects pertaining to this subject in the collection of the Rijksmuseum, see J.P. Sigmond and W.T. Kloek, Sea Battles in the Dutch Golden Age, Zwolle 2014, pp. 138-51. the ship was captured by the Dutch along with several other warships, and towed to the river Maas. The ship was too large to be of practical use to the Dutch fleet, and in 1673 it was sold for breaking up at Hellevoetsluis for a sum of 5,000 Dutch guilders.⁵⁵J.C.J. de Jonge, Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche zeewezen, 5 vols. and index, Haarlem 1858-62, vol. 2, p. 765.

The stern decoration was preserved in the storehouses of the Admiralty of Rotterdam until the beginning of the nineteenth century, when it was put on display in the armoury of the Navy dockyard in Rotterdam by Rear Admiral Job Seaburne May (1765-1827). At the same time, a wooden panel explaining the provenance was added to the top of the carvings (see NG-MC-239-1). After the Navy dockyard in Rotterdam was closed, the object was transferred to the Navy Model Room in The Hague in 1855, and in 1883 it was sent to the museum.

J.M. Obreen, Catalogus der verzameling modellen van het Departement van Marine, The Hague 1858, no. 239; J.C.J. de Jonge, Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche zeewezen, 5 vols. and index, Haarlem 1858-62, vol. 2, pp. 177-214; R. van Luttervelt, Catalogus tentoonstelling ter herdenking van Michiel de Ruyter geboren 24 maart 1607, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Vlissingen (Nieuw Tehuis voor Bejaarden) 1957, no. 176; R. van Luttervelt, Oude schepen / Old Ships, Amsterdam 1957, no. 17; R. van Luttervelt, ‘Herinneringen aan Michiel Adriaenszoon de Ruyter in het Rijksmuseum’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 5 (1957), no. 2, pp. 27-71, pp. 51-52; P.G. Rogers, The Dutch in the Medway, London/New York 1970; C.J.W. van Waning and A. van der Moer, Dese aengenaeme tocht. Chatham 1667 herbezien door zeemansogen, Zutphen 1981; A.J. Hoving, ‘Stern Carvings’, Model Shipwright 78 (1991), pp. 49-54; W. van Nispen, De Teems in brant. Een verzameling teksten en afbeeldingen rond de Tweede Engelse Zeeoorlog (1665-1667), Hilversum 1991; H. Stevens (ed.), The Art of Technology: The Navy Model Collection in the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam/Wormer 1995, pp. 12-15; A.J. Hoving, Message in a Model: Stories from the Navy Model Room of the Rijksmuseum, Florence, OR 2013, pp. 42-45; D. Starkey, Royal River: Power, Pageantry & the Thames, exh. cat. London (National Maritime Museum Greenwich) 2012, no. 197; G. van der Ham, De geschiedenis van Nederland in 100 voorwerpen, Amsterdam 2013, pp. 235-43; J.P. Sigmond and W.T. Kloek, Sea Battles in the Dutch Golden Age, Zwolle 2014, pp. 138-51

J. van der Vliet, 2016, 'anonymous, Stern Decoration of the Royal Charles, England, c. 1663 - c. 1664', in J. van der Vliet and A. Lemmers (eds.), Navy Models in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.244051