Jenny Lind:
The mystery of Nightingale’s figurehead
By Karl Eric Svärdskog
THE REMARKABLE FIND
In 1990 I was a fed up schoolteacher and decided to open a little antique shop in Gothenburg,
Sweden. After a few years, I met Günter, a picker who drove around in a fire truck,
buying old furniture, windows and so forth. In May 1994 Günter asked, “Do you want to buy a
scarecrow?” He had visited a farmer the day before and seen a hand protruding from among the
rakes and shovels, leaning against the wall of a hayloft. According to the farmer, the appendage belonged
to a near life-size wooden figure used as a scarecrow about 100 years ago. At night however, in the moonlight,
it had scared people as well as crows, so it was relegated to the back of the loft and forgotten.
The only thing Günter could distinguish in the darkness was that the hand appeared well carved.
No one had ever tried to sell me a scarecrow before. After some anguish, I made an offer through
Günter to buy it. A few weeks later, he asked me to come to his farm and see my purchase.
Günter had a strange sense of humor. That evening, when I pushed open the heavy barn door,
I saw through flickering candlelight what presumably was the scarecrow. It was hidden
under a thin blanket. Mozart’s Requiem streamed from loudspeakers.
Hesitantly, I walked toward the figure to uncover the blanket. What was I going to see?
Click on the picture for video sequence
The experience was unreal. When the figure’s intense gaze met mine the world stood still as
questions whirled in my head. Who are you? Who made you? Where did you come from?
RESEARCH
Careful cleaning revealed fragments of gold leaf around the waist and ruffles on the right sleeve.
This was no common scarecrow.
The rounded base reminded me of a ship’s figurehead. Could it be?
A curator at Karlskrona Maritime Museum, confirmed that the wooden lady had once graced the prow of a
merchant ship. The hole in her stomach was for the drift pin that fastened the figure in place. Her hairstyle and
narrow-waisted dress were high fashion around 1850.There was often a connection between a
ship’s name and its figurehead. Consequently, if I could find out whom the figurehead represented,
I might be able to determine which ship she came from. While browsing literature I came upon references
stating that the likeness of Jenny Lind sometimes appeared on 19th-century figureheads.
I decided to find out what she looked like.
Could the scarecrow be one of the figureheads depicting the Swedish opera singer?
(Courtesy of Royal Library, Stockholm)
Of the many reproductions of Jenny Lind, the most convincing was an engraving of a dramatic
scene from Meyerbeer’s opera Robert le Diable at Her Majesty's Theatre, London; May 4, 1847.
They corresponded down to the finest detail. Now I knew who she was.
My scarecrow was Jenny Lind!
JENNY LIND 1820 – 1887
(Courtesy of Royal Library, Stockholm )
In the 1800s the gifted Swedish soprano Jenny Lind ruled the European stage with her remarkable vocal
range and tone. She was the first megastar: the Victorian version of the Beatles. Hearing of the singer's
fame in Europe, New York impresario P. T. Barnum organized an American tour in 1850 that catapulted her into
international stardom. Jenny Lind fever hit America through the twenty months that the singer toured the country.
This, the first tour made by a European artist in the USA, was a tremendous success. Crowds mobbed her wherever
she went. People put Jenny’s name or image on everything. Towns, schools, furniture, cigars, sausages, locomotives
and, of course, ships. From the register cards at the maritime museum in Gothenburg, I learned that six ships were
named Jenny Lind. One of the ships on the list was the American clipper ship Nightingale.
She was famous for carrying a beautiful figurehead of Jenny Lind.
NIGHTINGALE CLIPPER SHIP
An oil painting by James Buttersworth depicting Nightingale getting underway of Battery in New York.
The painting is a symbolically composed motif with Castle Garden, the cite of Jenny Lind’s American debut,
in the background.
The middle 19th century was the peak period of American clipper ship production. The clipper
ships were the fastest sailing vessels the world have ever seen – long and lean, with sharp bows,
raked masts and a cumulus of sail. Samuel Hanscom Jr, a shipbuilder in Eliot, Maine, had heard
Jenny Lind sing and named his new clipper Nightingale after her nickname – the Swedish nightingale.
The ship was adorned with a finely carved figurehead of the singer. On 16 June 1851, two months
before the schooner America inspired the launch of the America’s Cup race, Nightingale
slid into the Piscataqua River. Her story would be as romantic and exciting as anything in marine
fiction. Built as the first cruising yacht to carry passengers across the Atlantic to “Prince Albert’s
Great Exhibition” in London, and then to be exhibited in the Thames, Nightingale was fitted out
regardless of expense with large saloons and most luxurious cabin arrangements. Unfortunately her
owners fell short of money before she was completed, and the clipper was sold at auction in Boston.
She did not go to the Great Exhibition, as did the schooner America, but sailed on her maiden
voyage to Sydney. She was the first ship to set sail with American gold diggers to this remote
part of the world. Nightingale left Australia for China. For a decade she took part in the famous
Tea Races to London. Nightingale was much admired for her beauty, and was considered by some
contemporary authorities to have been the fastest vessel in the American merchant marine.
(Courtesy of Carl Hendel Friberg)
© 2007 Swedish Nightingale Förlag & C.E. Svärdskog Antik
In February 1860, Nightingale was sold in New York to Francis Bowen, known as the "slave prince.”
Under his command the ship sailed from Cabinda, Angola, to Cuba with 2,000 Africans in irons.
Fortunately this stage of the Nightingale´s career was brief. In April of 1861, the Nightingale was
captured by the USS Saratoga. Captain Bowen and his crew were taken prisoners and the ship was
sailed as a “prize boat” back to New York. Because there was no defence, it was decided that
Nightingale would be sold at an auction arranged by the military. Nightingale was purchased by the
United States government. During the Civil War, she was fitted as an armed cruiser for the Federal Navy.
After the War, Nightingale was used as flagship for the Western Union Telegraph Company.
At that time, the company was looking into the possibility of tying together the Old and New World
with a telegraph cable over the Bering Strait, right through Siberia and into western Europe. Publicity
attendant on the project was an important factor in the decision by the United States to purchase Alaska
from the Russians. In 1876 Nightingale was bought by Norwegian ship-owners. On March 17, 1893, she
was abandoned in the North Atlantic at the ripe old marine age of 42 years.
Depressed I looked at my scarecrow: If the Nightingale had sunk in the Atlantic,
how could her figurehead have reached a barn near Gothenburg?
DECKHOUSE
Click on the picture for video sequence.
(Courtesy of Jimmy Åsen)
A glimmer of hope returned when I read that
Nightingale’s last home port had been Kragerø in southern Norway, a day’s sail from Gothenburg.
I persuaded the local newspaper in Kragerø to run a story in the hope that a reader might be able to
solve the mystery of how the figurehead ended up in a Swedish barn instead of at the bottom of the Atlantic.
I was lucky. An old man said that one of the Nightingale’s deckhouses was on Kirkeholmen
Island off Kragerø. The owner of the island, Anders Thomassen, confirmed that in 1885 Nightingale’s
bow was severely damaged when it hit a reef near there. The ship was towed to the yard on Kirkeholmen for
repairs. In order to make a larger hatch, one of Nightingale’s deckhouses was removed and placed slightly
behind the shipyard. A sloping roof added to the deckhouse protected it from the elements,
enabling it to become the only one existing from an American clipper ship.
While repairing the bow, it was necessary to remove the figurehead and it was put on land. The Nightingale
sailed her last seven years without any ornamentation on the bow. Anders Thomassen had heard this story from
his grandfather, the last of the relatives to run the shipyard. It is believable that some of the Swedes
that joined the craftsman took pity on their countryman and took her home after finishing their work.
THE LOOSE ENDS CAME TOGETHER
The final piece of the jigsaw fell into place when the eldest man on the farm remembered something.
As a little boy, he had heard that, a relative had bought the "scarecrow" after it was taken off a ship
in Norway. It had been on a large ship that went across the Atlantic. In the spring of 1893, when
the Nightingale sank to the bottom of the Atlantic, the ship’s figurehead, Jenny Lind, was going
full speed ahead scaring other nightingales in a field in western Sweden. The main railway between
Gothenburg and Stockholm - the same route as at the end of 1800s - runs close to the field. The figurehead
was presumably transported from the harbor of Gothenburg by train. My quest had ended, or nearly.
I was now fully confident that I knew who my scarecrow was and where she was from.
Could I, however, convince others?
EVIDENCE FROM ART AND SCIENCE
A color analysis executed by
Margareta Edebo from the Studio of the Western Sweden Conservators Trust
showed that Jenny has been painted approximately 25 times in different shades of
white and light yellow. Some details had been painted with different blue dye or even gilded.
IMPORTANT FACTS
No Scandinavian ship has been famous for carrying a figurehead of Jenny Lind.
A wonderful carved figurehead like Jenny should have created a lot of excitement
in Sweden and Denmark and HC. Andersen, her greatest admirer, had been over the moon.
Georgia Hamilton states in the book “Silent Pilots - Figureheads in Mystic Seaport Museum”:
“National origins are very difficult to trace. Wood type can be a means of identifying national origin”.
An analysis done of the wood in the figurehead by Richard Franzén from the Studio
of the Western Sweden Conservators Trust, and a later confirming study
undertaken by Sotheby’s, indicated that the Jenny Lind figurehead was carved from Eastern
white pine (pinus strobus), which only grows in the northeastern part of North America.
It was the wood used most often by the carvers in New England,
who would have carved the figureheads for the American clippers.
According to Manne Dunge – curator at the Marine Museum in Karlskrona, Sweden and
Richard Hunter – a prominent English figurehead expert, most European figureheads
were carved in oak, elm, lime or Scots Pine (Pinus sylvestris). Scandinavian figureheads
from the 1850:s were carved in oak, Swedish Pine or Teak.
No known Scandinavian figureheads were carved in Eastern white pine
(Pinus strobus) or white pine (Pinus monticola)!
Most English 19th century figureheads were laminated. Jenny is carved from a single, solid log
of eastern pine (in the USA good wood was still available.)There is no question that the Nightingale
carried a ¾ figurehead which was very rare for American built ships. It is however evident
that the majority of human figureheads were full-length standing figures with one foot in
front of the other at the base, a position that suggest the feeling of speed.
The Nightingale figurehead was carved in an unusual style of American figureheads, and it is, in
actual fact, exactly as the rediscovered original figurehead should be. There is no question that
the figure’s size and three quarter format coincide with what is known of the Nightingale figurehead.
The explanation why the Jenny Lind figureheads was an exception from the rule could be that
Jenny Lind used to be portrayed in a dignified manner wearing a long dress.
The drape of the dress would naturally resolve into a scroll.
AN ENLARGEMENT OF THE BOW
BUTTERSWORTH’S PAINTING
(Courtesy of Terrance Geaghan)
An enlargement of Buttersworth's painting shows a white three-quarter size figurehead with both arms
outstretched and my Jenny´s weren´t. For all this time, had I been following the wrong path? I returned to my
Jenny and looked at her again. The more closely I looked, the more my spirits rose.
The left sleeve of Jenny´s dress had three rows of ruffles; the right had four.
The left arm was anatomically incorrect; it was too stout.
The left hand was not carved with the same accuracy as the right, and the fingertips protruded awkwardly.
The waist on the left side of the dress curved softly upward, precisely the way fabric would fall if the
upper arm was stretched out from the side. Suddenly, it became clear to me that her left arm was not original.
Everything indicated that the right arm – still the original – had also been outstretched initially,
although not as much as the left arm. It made sense that the figurehead’s outstretched arms had
been, over time, given a safer position.
CARVER JOHN W MASON
1814-1866
(Courtesy of Phyllis Mason estate, Cape Cod, Massachusetts)
© 2007 Swedish Nightingale Förlag & C.E. Svärdskog Antik
Who carved Jenny? Books on clipper ships state that Nightingale’s figurehead was lifelike, beautiful, and
well carved. Remarkably there is no information revealing the woodcarver’s name. Clipper ships
launched in the Piscataqua River carried figureheads made in Boston. My research suggests that
John Mason was called upon when human figureheads were needed. He attained considerable
fame and many considered him to be America’s foremost sculptor.
Certainly he was a logical person for the task.
(Courtesy, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA)
© 2007 Swedish Nightingale Förlag & C.E. Svärdskog Antik
Mason´s twenty or so surviving drawings are at the Peabody Essex Museum. Mason’s figurehead sketches titled
“Belle of the West” (left) and “Woman with Crown” (right) compared to Jenny. The way Jenny was carved
is identical to the sketched figurehead’s long beautiful neck and her nose with the classic slight angle protruding
from the forehead. Mason may have worked from the same basic pattern as he
created his proposals for these figureheads.
The figurehead of Jenny Lind and the Queen of Sheba´s gracile necks
seem to be designed in the same manner.
Revell Carr, former president and director of Mystic Seaport in Connecticut, says that there is
certainly the stylistic similarity with the Belle of the West drawing, particularly the point where her bodice
meets her skirt. John Mason is indeed the likely artist and Jenny Lind is probably his only extant carving.
(Courtesy, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA)
(Courtesy of Carl Hendel Friberg)
© 2007 Swedish Nightingale Förlag & C.E. Svärdskog Antik
An article published in the Boston Daily Evening Traveller describes Nightingale. It states: “The figurehead is
a finely carved figure of Jenny Lind, painted white, set off with gilded ornaments; in the right hand,
which is extended, is a gilded bird, representing the nightingale with half-spread wings.”
An American clipper ship´s name, executed in carved letters on the stern, were in almost all cases gilded or
painted white. Nightingale was the exception to the rule. An extract from the newspaper´s description of the stern
states that the name Nightingale was in carved letters in blue and gold.
Female figureheads on clipper ships were generally robed in vestments of white, fringed with gold.
Once again Nightingale was the exception.
The Nightingale figurehead was white, edged in blue and gold.
Around her waist was a girdle in the same color.
The leaf-carved scrolls retaining traces of blue paint.
The colors of blue and gold of the carved letters on the stern corresponds
wíth the figurehead´s accent of blue and gold, the national colors of Sweden.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE REPLICA
Click on the picture for video sequence.
I just had to see her as she was originally
A reconstruction of the figurehead shows Jenny Lind urging the nightingale perched on her finger to fly
off and sing for the world. To keep the original figure un-restored it underwent a process of computer
scanning and C.N.C. cutting to produce a second figure. The British carver Andy Peters re-created
the original position of Jenny’s arms and carved the nightingale. As I painted the replica I followed
the colors in the first layer of paint on the original Jenny Lind.
Nightingale’s figurehead in the centre of often published portraits and reproductions depicting Jenny Lind.
Jenny’s face from the reconstructed figurehead was digitally imposed upon this Swedish 50-crown note.
PROVENANCE FOR THE FIGUREHEAD
1851 most likely carved by John Mason in Boston.
1885 removed from Nightingale during repairs in Norway.
1994 discovered in a barn in Sweden.
Click on the picture for video sequense.
1996 unveiled by King Karl Gustaf the 16th at the
National Museum of Fine Arts in Stockholm.
Click on the picture for video sequence.
1996 on stage at Stockholm’s Concert Hall in connection with
a concert performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
1997 symbol for the Cutty Sark Tall Ships' Races in
Gothenburg.
1998 May, appeared in National Geographic.
2001 On stage during a Jenny Lind concert at Portsmouth Music Hall,
New Hampshire, to mark the 150th anniversary of Nightingale.
Summer guest at the Portsmouth Athenaeum.
From 2002 to 2005 on full time exhibition in the figurehead
room at Mystic Seaport Museum, Mystic Connecticut.
2006 Jenny turned slowly on her automated pedestal
at South Street Seaport Museum in New York City.
2007 January, on view together with the replica (arms still to be fitted)
in Sotheby´s 10th floor galleries in New York City
as a coming highlight of Important Americana in January 2008.
SUMMARY
Very few actual parts remain from American clipper ships. Nightingale’s Jenny Lind and Great Republic’s
eagle are the only two figureheads saved from extreme clipper ships – the greyhounds of the sea.
Jenny spent 34 years at sea while the eagle never saw the sea because of a destroying
fire before the ship’s maiden voyage.
Jenny facing the eagle at Mystic Seaport
The Nightingale
figurehead is the finest tribute to Jenny Lind and her time in America.
In addition it is one of very few artefacts existing from
ships fighting under the flag of the
Northern States in the Civil War. Equally significant is the fact that it is the only existing carving
from the approximately 40,000 slave ships that for 300 years carried 10-26 millions slaves, across
the Atlantic, from Africa to America. (By cruel irony, Jenny Lind herself contributed generously
to anti-slavery organizations.)
Because no other figurehead from an American clipper ship has been found during the last
75 years, it seems logical to assume that the Jenny Lind heroine from the Nightingale
was the last carving from these remarkable vessels to be discovered. But, never say never!
A hot tip for Günter is to begin searching for traces from the clipper Witch of the Wave which
end her days in Norway. The ship’s figurehead, carved by John Mason, surely stands in
some Norwegian or Swedish barn. The question is which one?
I’ve thought about providing Günter with more diesel for his truck.
What speaks for that Jenny from the beginning kept her arms outstretched?