HMS 'Daphne' off Cape Horn, 28 May 1852 (watercolour)

Creator: Admiral Sir Edward Gennys Fanshawe Mounted in album with PAI4605-PAI4669.; No.63. No. 63 in Fanshawe's Pacific album, 1849-1852. Captioned by the artist on the album page below the image; 'Cape Horn, May 28th 1852'. Fanshawe left Panama about 20 March 1852, at the end of his Pacific commission in the 'Daphne' (carrying home a freight of Mexican silver). 'She put into Valparaiso [Chile] for the last time, was delayed by a gale to the west of Cape Horn, then got a fair wind and had fine weather for rounding the Cape on May 28th. The day before this she sailed faster than ever before, making 13 knots...' (Fanshawe [1904], p.296). This speed is the more remarkable since the ship was still under a reduced rig following dismasting at Mazatlan (see PAI4669) as can be seen here from the lowered height of her main and fore lower masts in relation to the slender replacement mizzen. The view none the less shows her running past the Horn under all plain sail - itself fairly unusual in that latitude - with the sea suggesting the aftermath of the earlier gale. She put into the Falkland Islands, and very briefly at Rio, before reaching Spithead, Portsmouth, on 6 August. She paid off at Chatham on 14th. After an absence of nearly three years, Fanshawe rejoined his family and spent the next two with them ashore on half-pay before taking command of the 'Cossack' in August 1854. This he could well afford to do, not least from the sizeable commission on the silver freight he had brought home from Mexico.