Name/Title
The Arkansas & the RussiaEntry/Object ID
1987.44.1Description
A black and white photo of the ships Arkansas & Russia titled "Ship Arkansas, Capt. Nehemiah Laribee, Left the Port. Havana May 1847". The following info is from a letter accompanying the accession record:
Captain Nehemiah Larrabee was a resident of Brunswick and in the 1840s and 1850s he evidently had a good business relationship with the Moses brothers of Bath, William V. and Oliver, who ran a shipyard and a small fleet of vessels. In 1844 the Moses shipyard produced the bark Russia, which the Moses brothers operated in their own fleet. They gave command of the new 331-ton bark to Nehemiah Larrabee. The following year they built another new vessel, the ship-rigged Arkansas, to which Larrabee then transferred command. She measured 399 tons (N.B. tonnage of merchant vessels of this period is a measurement of volume, not of weight). These 2 vessels are clearly the ones in the painting, and are correctly rigged. The paint jobs on the hulls match what is known about the preferences of W.V. and O. Moses, who evidently continued to use the painted false gun ports long after they had gone out of style. Havana was a common port of call for Maine vessels in that period; many Maine shipowners were heavily involved in the West Indies trade.
The painting is typical of what is called a "ship portrait". Such paintings were normally cranked out by a seaport artist who specialized in such things, and were usually made for the vessel's captain or owners. This painting was clearly made for Captain Larrabee, since it portrays at least two vessels he commanded. Arkansas evens flies a captain's flag from her mizzen mast, with Larrabee's initials (the Russia also does, though it is not as clear). Larrabee commanded smaller vessels in another local fleet in the late 1830s, and it seems to have "swallowed the anchor" [meaning Larrabee settled down into a life on land, retiring from the sea] in the 1850s. He invested heavily in several (perhaps many) vessels, and the Moses yard even built a ship named N. Larrabee in 1857. Nehemiah Larrabee died on May 6, 1863 at the age of 63 and was buried locally.Lexicon
Search Terms
Ship, Ship captains, Shipbuilding, Shipbuilding - Bath, Cuba, Vessels - Arkansas, Vessels - Russia, Havana, CubaCopyright
Copyright Details
Though the accession paperwork does not explicitly mention it, I assume the rights to the photo belong to the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.