Ship Figureheads: Sekhmet's Lionesses, Navy Budget Cuts, and the Ram Bow

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Dutch sailors believed tiny protective spirits lived in the carved figure at the bow, and that a ship lost without one doomed its crew's souls to haunt the sea. The urge to give a ship a face runs back millennia: Greek galleys painted eyes on their bows, Phoenicians carved horse heads for speed, the lionesses on Ramses III's ships in the Medinet Habu relief likely represent the war goddess Sekhmet, and Viking longships bore toothy monsters as apotropaic magic. In Burma, royal barges of the Konbaung dynasty carried different mythical figureheads by rank. With skeleton built hulls and a strong stem head, 16th century galleons gained a mount for large carvings, which served as name tags for dock workers who could not read.

Baroque figureheads grew to several tons and dragged bows into the waves. In 1796 the Admiralty tried to ban them on new ships to save money, but crews saw a faceless ship as cursed, so surveyors instead cut arms and color from designs, and carvers moved details onto trail boards. Carving families such as the Dickersons and the Hellyers competed for contracts, while Parsi carvers at Bombay Dockyard worked in Malabar teak. The ram bows of ironclads finally left no place for them.

Records show Elizabeth Chichley carving the figurehead for HMS Royal Sovereign in 1786.
Teak built ships from Bombay, including HMS Seringapatam of 1819 and HMS Asia of 1824, lasted more than 50 years.
HMS Rodney, launched in 1884, was the last British battleship to carry a figurehead.
The sloop HMS Espiegle kept hers until she was scrapped in 1923.
The SS Imperator of 1910 bolted a bronze eagle on a globe to her bow to claim the title of longest ship in the world.

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