Figs 1 and 2: Monument to Captain George Duff (1763–1805).
By John Bacon Junior (1777–1859).
Signed ‘J.BACON JUNR FT’
1806–12.
White marble.
Crypt, Nelson Chamber, West Bay (originally Cathedral Floor, elevated panel at the entrance to the Quire, South Pier, until 1860).
Inscription
ERECTED AT THE PUBLIC EXPENSE
TO THE MEMORY OF / CAPTAIN GEORGE DUFF,
WHO WAS KILLED THE XXIST.OF OCTR.
MDCCCV.
COMMANDING THE MARS,
IN THE BATTLE OF TRAFALGAR,
IN THE FORTY–SECOND YEAR OF HIS AGE
AND THE TWENTY–NINTH OF HIS SERVICE.
Introduction
John Bacon Junior’s monument to Captain George Duff was one of three memorials commissioned to the highest–ranking dead at the Battle of Trafalgar of 21 October 1805. Commissioned at the same time as the monument to Admiral Horatio Nelson, it originally stood above John Flaxman’s monument to the famous naval leader, and opposite Richard Westmacott’s monument to Duff’s friend, Captain John Cooke. Situated high above Nelson’s monument at the entrance to the Quire, it was intended to be viewed from below, but was removed to the crypt in 1860 when the Quire was remodelled to open out to the nave. Today the work stands at the entrance to the tomb of Nelson in the crypt, where its large scale is slightly at odds with its confined surroundings and pedestrian height.
The monument has at its centre a roundel portrait of the thick–set Scot, Captain Duff, in profile relief, facing to the left. His portrait is truncated at the neck, in the manner of Roman coins, but also in a sublimated reference to the manner of Duff’s death, which occurred when a cannonball removed his head from his shoulders as he directed the crew of his ship, HMS Mars, in the fierce early fighting of the Battle of Trafalgar. Duff is shown with energetic breezy hair, a double–chin, and open eyes with incised eyeballs. His portrait appears on a classical sarcophagus, although it is not a tomb: Duff was actually buried at sea on 22nd October. The sarcophagus has lions’ paw feet with gadrooning, a simple moulding, and a triangular pediment with two undecorated quarter–circle acroterion.
The sarcophagus is being draped with a garland of oak leaves and acorns by a willowy figure of Britannia. The leaves connected the decoration to the oak decoration of the Quire in its original location, but doubtlessly also symbolise the strength of the British oak. Britannia, a full–size statue, carved almost in the round, is standing contrapposto with her left leg forward. She is intended to be seen from below, and in consequence has an overly long neck and midriff which would have foreshortened at a distance seen from the ground. Although her body faces forward, she turns her head to the right, and outstretches her bared left arm to delicately strew her finely–carved garland across the tomb. Her plumed helmet with raised visor begins the gentle undulation that continues in the garland. She is a girlish and slim Britannia wearing a round–necked empire–line dress with high belt over a long skirt and carrying a drapery around her back. A ringlet of hair has escaped her helmet and falls down her neck, completing the impression of a rather delicate and sensitive national figure, rather than the chunky warlike one seen in Westmacott’s pendant monument. Her left hand leans on her shield, behind which is a lion, her traditional attribute, in high relief. His left–facing profile mirrors that of both Duff and the sailor, with the obvious implication of their shared national fierceness.
To the right of the sarcophagus is the figure of a bare–chested, bare–footed, sailor. He kneels and grieves for his lost Captain, his right knee to the floor, and his left arm resting on the inscription. The figure, which both balances and mirrors the lion at the left of the composition, is the most striking piece of carving on the artwork: the musculature of the arms, chest and feet, carved in intense anatomical detail; the veins throbbing in his feet. His trousers are tied at the back with a length of thin fabric. His head rests on the back of his hand, his eyes and mouth drooping in sadness, whilst his right hand is raised around the back of his head to grip the pole of a flag. The slight contortion of the pose gives an additional energy to the sense of uncontrolled grief. The flag is a Union Flag, carved in fine detail with a circular laurel wreath around the cap (a wreath, it is implied, that it was impossible to place on the head of the dead victor). The folds decline to the right behind the kneeling figure and complete the balance of the composition. The flag refers in part to Britannia, but presumably also to the use of a Union Flag to drape the body of Duff on the Quarter–Deck of the Mars after his death. The composition stands on a carved rocky base, which has been left rough between the striations.
Duff’s death at Trafalgar was widely reported, although much of the outpouring of national emotion was focussed on the death of Nelson. The victory crowned Nelson’s achievements at the Nile and Copenhagen, and precipitated numerous public monuments and celebrations to a man who was treated almost as a secular saint. The battle at Trafalgar was the final major naval operation of the Napoleonic Wars, establishing British domination of the seas.
In 1805 Napoleon had intended to send reinforcements to his invasion of Southern Italy, and Admiral Pierre–Charles Villeneuve had been ordered to bring the fleet of 33 ships to Naples. Duff had been foremost in Lord Collingwood’s fleet, which had been observing the French ships in southern Spanish ports for several months, awaiting a moment to attack. Once the thirty–three ships of the French and Spanish line put to sea, the twenty–seven ships of Nelson and Collingwood resolved to attack in two lines, forming a crescent. Collingwood’s despatches described how the great victory had been won by the formation of two columns, one led by Nelson in the Victory, and the other led by Collingwood in the Royal Sovereign, which attacked opposite ends of the French line. Duff in the Mars, of 74 guns, initially led Collingwood’s line, but it was a slow ship and was ultimately second into battle. At close range, the superior gunnery of the British allowed for a total victory, albeit at the end of an extremely bloody struggle:
it pleased the Almighty Disposer of all events, to grant his Majesty’s arms a complete and glorious Victory; about three PM many of the enemy’s ships having struck their colours, their line gave way.
(Collingwood dispatches in, for instance, the Ipswich Journal, 9 November 1805)
Having split the enemy line in two, the pounding from the guns resulted in the destruction of one French ship and the capture of 17 more. Over four hundred sailors, who famously had been told by Nelson as the battle commenced that Britain expected every man to do his duty, were killed and 1200 injured. The French suffered around 4000 dead. Collingwood recorded the death of Nelson, whose ‘name will be immortal, and his memory ever dear to his country’. Collingwood’s own heart, he wrote, was ‘rent with the most poignant grief for the death of a friend… a grief to which even the glorious occasion in which he fell, does not bring the consolation which perhaps it ought’. Nelson, he wrote, died from a musket ball in his left breast. In addition, with fewer encomiums, he reported that:
I also have to lament the loss of those excellent officers Captains Duff, of the Mars, and Cooke, of the Bellerophon. I have heard yet of nine others. I fear that the numbers that have fallen will be found very great, when the returns come to me.
(Ibid.).
The mourning and the celebrations were principally focussed on Nelson, and his funeral in St Paul’s Cathedral was one the most significant events in the Cathedral’s history. Duff, however, also received a short eulogy in Rev. Halloran’s The Battle of Trafalgar: A Poem:
Thus, for their comrades while their tears o’erflow’d,
Too active Fame an added pang bestow’d;
When weeping Pity bade her sorrows tell,
How gallant COOKE and DUFF in Battle fell!
Lamented chiefs! Whose Fate too early prov’d,
They died regretted, as they liv’d, belov’d!
(Halloran 1806, p.29)
In a footnote, the poet, who was chaplain on board Lord William Northesk’s Britannia at the battle, called the two men ‘brave and valuable officers; who to the deep regret of the navy, and irreparable loss of their families, were unfortunately slain in this dreadful conflict’ (ibid., p.58).
On 6 January 1806 Lord Castlereagh, then William Pitt’s deputy, gave the thanks of the House of Commons for the victory at Trafalgar. These were addressed to Collingwood as the surviving Commander of the battle. Previous votes of thanks to Admirals Duncan and Nelson for the battles of Camperdown, the Nile and Copenhagen had established the tradition that monuments should be erected to the highest–ranking officer (or officers) who died at a major victory. In those cases, the monuments to Captain Burges, Captain Westcott and Captains Mosse and Riou were the outcome. In this case, the commander was also the principal casualty, and the address desired that the King would direct that:
A monument be erected in the Cathedral of St Paul’s, London, to the memory of the late ever–to–be–lamented Lord Viscount Nelson, who fell gloriously in the moment of the most brilliant and decisive victory.
(Leeds Intelligencer, 3 February 1806)
Castlereagh also signalled that the house gave thanks to all the men and marines involved, and asked His Majesty:
To give directions that monuments be erected in the Cathedral church of St Paul, London to the memory of Captain George Duff and Captain John Cooke, who fell gloriously in that signal Victory.
(Journal of the Houses of Commons, 31 January 1806, vol.61, p.20)
Parliament was, as usual, to cover the costs out of government expenditure, and the motion passed without any dissent. In February the King’s approval for the scheme was recorded by the House of Lords. Duff would, no doubt, have been glad to be commemorated along with Nelson, for whom he had the highest regard (‘He is so good and pleasant a man, that we all wish to do what he likes, without any kind of orders’), but also with Cooke, whom he described as ‘one of my oldest friends in the service’. Duff’s childhood tutor, the Rev. David Milne, wrote in a letter of condolence to Sophia Duff, the deceased’s wife, that:
I had the honour to know him in his earliest days and ever found his mind possessed of the finest dispositions, and always pointing to that element on which he so gloriously fell. I rejoice to find his country is so sensible of his merit that a monument is voted for him, with others, at the public charge.
(Naval Chronicle May 1806, pp.291, 284, 275–6)
Captain George Duff
Several accounts of Duff throughout his career represent him as a man of strong discipline who, nevertheless, inspired great loyalty among his men. It is, no doubt, the reason that the sculptural conceit of a sailor mourning for his Captain was introduced for the first time into St Paul’s for this monument. Accounts of the deceased Captain after Trafalgar were marked by regard for his bravery, and for the crew’s loyalty. Duff’s ship, the Mars, was ordered to break the line of French and Spanish ships first. As she was a difficult ship to keep even keel, Duff’s preparations were extensive; he personally inspected every inch of the vessel. The Mars, however, remained slow and was overtaken by Collingwood in the Royal Sovereign. Breaking the line second, the Mars was soon surrounded by French ships on both sides, a Spanish ship behind, and a fourth ship at shooting range. Thinking the French ship Fougeaux was disabled in the initial fight, Duff concentrated fire on the three others, although it soon became clear that the Fougeaux was still active. Duff instructed the men to keep firing at the ships that were visible in the smoke and went to look over the side of the Quarter–Deck, to see the position of the Fougeaux and to redirect the guns accordingly, at which point the Fougeaux began the fatal broadside. A Midshipman, James Robinson, later recounted the events:
We engaged five ships at one time Captain Duff realised about with steady fortitude and said my God what shall we do there is a Spanish three decker raking us ahead a French one under the stern in a few minutes our port was totally cleared the quarter deck and forcastle nearly the same only the Boatswain and myself and three men left alive it was then the gallant Captain fell I saw him fall his head and neck were taken entirely off his body when the men heard it they held his dead body up and gave three cheers to show they were not discouraged by it and then returned to their guns we fought two hours and a half without intermission and when the smoke cleared away we found five ships had sunk.
(Robinson to his mother, sold Lyon and Turnbull 2013, quoted in The Scotsman, 10 May 2013)
The Mars had suffered 98 deaths by the close of the battle. The curiously macabre spectacle of the men cheering and raising aloft his headless corpse seems to have been a mark of respect for the captain, whose wishes they continued to carry out. According to one posthumous account, there was scarcely a dry eye among the crew for their leader, as ‘every one felt that he had lost his friend and benefactor; and they all exclaimed “we shall never again have such a commander!”’ Duff was buried at sea the following day in the pouring rain, in the presence of his men, the defeated French Admiral Villeneuve, and the 13–year–old Norwich Duff, son of the captain, who had recently joined the Mars as a Midshipman. Norwich wrote to his mother to tell her the fate of ‘Dear Papa’’ who had ‘died like a Hero, having gallantly led his ship into action’ (Naval Chronicle, May 1806, pp.272–4).
As the inscription on the monument records, this was the end of a man who had spent nearly thirty years in continuous naval service. Captain George Duff was born in Banff, Scotland on 1 February 1764, the son of a solicitor, James Duff, who was at that time the Sheriff–Clerk of Banffshire. The family lived in a large quadrangular town residence on the harbour front, where George Duff found a passion for boats and sailing. The family included some seafarers, although James Duff was not initially supportive of his son’s passion for the sea. When George Duff was around 9 years old, he stowed away on a merchant’s vessel before the Master found him and returned him home. His father, realising his son was not to be dissuaded, ordered the family tutor Rev. Milne to train him for the Navy. Aged 11, Duff joined his grand–uncle Commodore Robert Duff on the Panther 60 in the Mediterranean. He was in thirteen engagements before he was 16 years old, when, through his uncle’s interests, he became a lieutenant on 15 September 1779.
On 16 January 1780 he was at the moonlight battle off Finisterre under Admiral Rodney. Serving in the Montagu he was caught in a hurricane off St Lucia and a falling mast left him with a contusion on his right leg that only partially healed and left him with occasional pain for the rest of his life. In 1781 he continued to fight in Rodney’s campaigns to secure West Indian territory, rendered profitable through trade and slave plantations: at St Eustatius on 3 February; the Battle of Fort Royal, 29 April; and Chesapeake Bay, 5 September. Duff fought at the Battle of St Kitts, 25 January 1782, and the famous Battle of the Saintes on 12 April 1782, when Rodney secured his greatest victory over the French. Duff remained in the West Indies until 1787, as 1st Lieutenant on the Europa 50, where he gained a reputation for discipline. He also made useful connections with the Scottish contingent, including the Adjudant–General of Jamaica, Captain Dirom, whose family he had known in Banff (and who later became his brother–in–law), and the Governor of Jamaica Archibald Campbell. Through them he met Admiral Rodney, who tabled him for promotion. However, Rodney was recalled before Duff could capitalise on his connection. In 1787 Duff’s wound reopened and compelled him to return to Scotland to recover.
By 1790 he was in home service, but anxious to return to duty. His father wrote, slightly unwillingly, to the minister Henry Dundas on 24 May to recommend his son for promotion in the build–up to war, or what he called the ‘present bussle’ (Tayler and Tayler 1914, p.262). Duff Sr explained that although he was recommending rest to his son, George himself was anxious to return to duties as he had recently revealed his intention to marry Miss Sophia Dirom. Duff’s choice was a family friend whom he had known since he was a child (in one of his final letters Duff even recalled them playing together at school). Duff Sr was concerned that Duff was not established enough to afford marriage, although Miss Dirom was extremely well connected, and had approached the Duke and Duchess of Gordon on his behalf, who had in turn spoken to William Pitt and to Henry Dundas. Now Duff Sr, he explained, felt he should also add his entreaties to the barrage. This string–pulling produced dividends, as Duff was recommended by Dundas to the Board of Admiralty for promotion. He was appointed Commander of the sloop Martin on the Scottish station, where he stayed until 1793, and on 6 May 1791 he married Sophia. They took up residence at 9 South Castle Street, Edinburgh and had one son and four daughters. Norwich Duff, who served in his final battle, was born 5 August 1792.
In 1793 William Pitt promoted Duff to Post–Captain, initially on the Resource 28, but he was speedily transferred to the Duke 90 for Earl St Vincent’s expedition to the West Indies, where French and British forces continued their struggle for control over the West Indian islands. The Duke led the attack on the batteries at Martinique (where Captain Faulknor distinguished himself), although after the battle the ship was struck by lightning, which destroyed the mast and damaged the hull. Duff returned home soon after and was appointed to serve in the North Sea fleet, first in the frigate Ambuscade 32, and then the Glenmore 38, where he was regarded as a somewhat parsimonious captain. His duties included the ferrying of Admiral Duncan from Scotland to Great Yarmouth to assume command of the North Sea fleet. In 1801 he was promoted to Captain of the Vengeance 74 and was sent to reinforce the Baltic fleet that had attacked Copenhagen, returning to Portsmouth that year to sit on a court martial.
Somewhere around this time he sat to the pre–eminent Scottish portraitist Henry Raeburn for his portrait, in full Captain’s uniform. A copy of the painting is in the National Maritime Museum (Fig. 3) and shows a fairly bull–headed man with his own soft grey hair, a long aquiline nose, and a double–chin. It seems to affirm the published descriptions of him as ‘a man of fine stature, strong and well made, above six feet in height’ who ‘had a manly, open, benevolent countenance’ (Naval Chronicle 1806, p.273). Raeburn also later painted a portrait of Norwich Duff.
Fig. 3: Unknown artist after Henry Raeburn, Captain George Duff (original c.1800), oil on canvas, BHC2666, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, Greenwich Hospital Collection (Public Domain, via Wikimedia).
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After a time cruising off Rochefort in 1801 Duff was sent to Bantry Bay off the coast of Ireland to help guard against French invasion. Whilst there a mutiny broke out in December 1801 amongst the crews of the British fleet, although Duff’s crew were unique in standing by their captain:
[Duff] was always active and vigilant and, though strict in discipline, had the happiness of being respected and beloved by the officers and men of every ship which was under his command – On the trials at Portsmouth, it came out in evidence, that, when the ringleaders of the mutiny, which arose in the squadron in Bantry Bay sounded the crew of the Vengeance, they found them so attached to their Captain, that they could not be moved. That ship, there is reason to believe, was the only one in which no mutinous spirit broke out; and upon the squadron coming to Portsmouth… her crew was indulged with leave to come on shore by turns, while all the others were confined to their ships.
(European Magazine, vol. 49, January 1806, p.34)
In 1802, in a move that seems to have even created resentments among the loyal, but weary, crew of the Vengeance – who had expected peace with France to result in a return home – the ship was dispatched to the West Indies. Its mission was to track the movements of the French fleet that had been sent to attempt to recover St Domingue from the slave revolution that began in late 1801. This was a brief journey, though, and was followed by 18 months at home. After the resumption of hostilities in 1793, Duff volunteered his services in researching the best means to protect the Scottish coast against French invasion, and his connections appealed to Earl St Vincent for a position. In April 1804 he was given command of the Mars, and in May was ordered to Ferrol to assume her command.
Duff spent the next months in the seas around Rochefort, Brest and Cadiz awaiting the departure of the French fleet from port. His letters home during his final campaign survive and give some insight into a character that was marked by practicality, loyalty and a strong regard for his colleagues. The crowning of Napoleon as Emperor in 1804 stirred him to declare that Bonaparte would have to be ‘made quiet’ as he feared ‘till he is so we shall have no peace’ (Naval Chronicle 1806, p.277), and he noted that the French sailors, despite their outward celebrations of the coronation, ‘do not much like the dignity he has assumed’ (ibid., p.279). He was pleased with his ship, although he knew that she ‘sails very ill,’ and was delighted when his request to have her re–coppered and given a new false keel was granted in September 1804. He admired all of his commanding officers: Collingwood he described as ‘a fine steady, good officer… I do not know one I would so soon go on service with’ (ibid., p.280), and Nelson as ‘so good and pleasant a man’ with effortless command (ibid., p.291). He was pleased to meet his ‘old friend’ Lord Northesk, and Pulteney Malcolm, and rejoiced when Captain Cooke arrived bearing ducks and fowls for him, professing himself delighted to have ‘so good and old a friend of the party’ (ibid., p.284).
Duff, as usual, kept strong discipline, insisting on uniform and cleanliness inspections. He also followed his usual practice of employing as many Scots as possible, bringing in seven Scottish officers to the Mars. He allowed and encouraged a performance of the Tragedy of Douglas by the Scots writer John Home, a play set in Edinburgh, on a bill that included Irish songs and a pantomime of Harlequin and the Miller. Duff thought it a very commendable performance, ending with God Save the King, although he felt that the costumes for the women characters could have done with a little more work. The letters are filled with incidental stories of the build–up to Trafalgar – the rescuing of a cask of wine from the sea, shooting a turbot – and the camaraderie during dinners amongst the officers. Nevertheless, Duff was also missing his wife and family. He complained that a miniature sent to him of Sophia looked nothing like her, and he was concerned for the future should he die (‘should I unfortunately fall, I hope that our friends will take care of you and our little ones’, ibid., p.283) especially as he feared the funds that he had amassed in his career were too meagre. The arrival of Norwich Duff as a midshipman filled him with rejoicing, and he sent news that the young man was ‘well and happy’ and little suffering from sea–sickness. In his last letter, written shortly after he had been ordered into his last battle, Duff reassured his wife that he had ordered Norwich below deck (Fig. 4).
Fig. 4: Captain George Duff’s last letter to his wife Sophia Dirom, upon receiving the order to attack at Trafalgar, facsimile in Tayler and Tayler ,1914 (Archive.org).
On 4th October 1805 Nelson sent a letter to Duff ordering him to lead the Mars, Defence and Colossus to a place three to four leagues from Cadiz, where he could relay messages from the frigates stationed near the port to the fleet that was hidden about fifty miles off the coast. The French fleet was expected to put out any day soon, and Nelson wanted there to be no delay in responding when they did. Duff hoped, with some encouragement, that he was being placed in the way of a promotion, especially as the Mars was given the honour of leading Collingwood’s lee line in the projected assault. On 20th October Duff sent the message that the French fleet was leaving the harbour. The following morning the two lines of the British fleet began the attack, with Nelson ordering Mars to lead the attack. Collingwood’s Royal Sovereign overtook Duff’s slower ship however, and Collingwood wrote ‘I thought it a long time after I got through their line before I found my friends about me: Duff, worthy Duff, was next to me but found a difficulty in getting through for we had to make a kind of S to pass them in the manner they were formed’ (Collingwood to Admiral Pasley, in Dispatches and Letters of Nelson, vol. 7, p.241).
Duff was killed early in the battle of Trafalgar, at about 1.15pm, at the fiercest moment of the cannon fight with the Fougeaux, the Pluton, the Monarca and the Algeciras. As more British ships broke the lines the fighting dispersed, although the Mars had lost her main topmast and spankerboom, her three lower masts, and her fore topmast, which eventually toppled over. The death toll was high, although not as high as the opposing force: the Pluton lost 300 men in the fight. It was reported that Duff’s head was carried off by the cannonball, although his headless body, which had fallen on the deck, was covered with a spare standard, a Union Jack, until after the action. He was clearly missed by Collingwood and by several other colleagues, including Captain Blackwood, who took charge of the young Norwich Duff after the battle. Blackwood said of Captain Duff that ‘His Majesty’s service could not boast of a better or more gallant officer’ (European Magazine 1806, p.35).
Even amongst the widespread mourning for Nelson, the stories of Duff and Cooke were the focus of several published pieces. The Gentleman’s Magazine ran a poem entitled ‘An Appeal to the gratitude of Britons’, which asked the country to not simply mourn for Nelson, but also to shed a tear for the families of Cooke and Duff. The writer was under the impression that an Alexander Duff who was killed on the Mars was Captain Duff’s son and produced a lengthy poem about Duff’s wife mourning over the grave of both father and son. This mistake took the edge off the pathos, although it demonstrates the stress that was placed on Duff’s role as an exemplar to the younger sailors:
So shall succeeding tars with parting breath
Bleed with delight and glory e’en in conscious death;
Conscious that Britons should record their name
And future ages contemplate their fame
(Tayler and Tayler 1914, p.267)
A few months after Duff’s death the European Magazine ran a memoir of Duff, which began with an address to the young Norwich Duff:
My son, avenge my death!
And, on that ocean where thy father lies.
Prove thyself worthy of Trafalgar’s day
(European Magazine 1806, p.265)
The piece stressed the regard that he was held in by his crews, and ended with the line ‘In the navy, he was known as WORTHY DUFF’ a claim that appears, from Collingwood’s use of the moniker in his letter to Admiral Pasley (above), to be true.
Raeburn’s portrait of Duff, which was in the family collection (and still was in 1914), was engraved with permission by Ridley and Hall for the edition of the European Magazine and shows Duff’s portrait above the family coat of arms (Fig. 5). A number of personal letters were also supplied to the editor for publication. A high–quality mezzotint of the same Raeburn portrait by George Dawe was issued that year by the Edinburgh printseller Pasquale Garof, who had also supplied the image for the European Magazine (Fig. 6).
Figs 5 and 6: Captain George Duff, European Magazine, 1806, engraved by Ridley and Hall; George Dawe, published by P. Garof, after Sir Henry Raeburn, George Duff, mezzotint, published 1 May 1806, NPG D35772 (© National Portrait Gallery, London; CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Monument Commission and Design
Parliament voted the monuments to Nelson, Duff and Cooke in January 1806, but contracts were not signed with the sculptors until October 1807. The commissioning process was a lengthy one owing to the large number of national monuments voted by Parliament that year. In addition to the various national schemes to commemorate Nelson, there were also prestigious monuments voted to Lord Cornwallis for St Paul’s, and William Pitt for Westminster Abbey. The decision was taken to run a competition for the three major monuments, to Nelson, Pitt and Cornwallis. The contracts for the Cooke and Duff monuments were signed on the same day as those for the three major monuments, suggesting that the latter commissions were decided in the same process.
The sculptor and design for the monument to Cooke was decided by the Committee of Taste, the body of connoisseurs, collectors and politicians that had been first appointed in March 1802 to provide an independent expert voice. Unfortunately, as with the first round of commissions in 1803, the committee’s papers have not been located in the Treasury archives. It is fairly clear, though, that the monument to Duff was not the major prize sought by the sculptors. On this occasion the public could also judge for themselves the merits of the competing designs, as all the submissions were displayed at the British Institution exhibition in February 1807:
What must render this exhibition peculiarly interesting and attractive to the public is, the assemblage in one part of the gallery (in a most judicious manner) of above 20 models of monuments, to the memory of the three illustrious characters, whose loss the nation has not yet ceased to deplore – PITT, NELSON and CORNWALLIS! These are the models which are to be referred to the Committee of Taste appointed by Parliament to examine their relative merits, and to order the execution of those which appear to them to evince the highest talents. FLAXMAN, BACON, WESTMACOTT, ROSSI, GARRARD and SMITH, are the candidates.
(Morning Post, 16 February 1807)
From this description, it is clear that the field of sculptors had been limited to a small number of figures, mostly artists connected to the RA. John Flaxman had already executed the Willett Miller monument for St Paul’s, and had the statue of Admiral Howe under hand, whilst JCF Rossi had executed the Faulknor monument, and the Mosse and Riou. They were the leading Royal Academicians, closely followed by the Rome–trained, well–connected Richard Westmacott ARA, who had surprisingly won the monument to Ralph Abercromby in 1803. George Garrard was an ARA who has chiefly become known as a horse sculptor, whilst Smith was presumably James Smith, the one–time RA student and assistant to Rossi who was the surprise winner of the 1806 Guildhall commission to erect a statue to Nelson.
John Bacon Junior was, at that time, both an insider and an outlier in the sculptural community. The son of the most famous and commercially successful sculptor in England, John Bacon Senior, he had excelled as a student at the Royal Academy, winning silver and gold medals in 1793–4. He had reportedly finished every major work that came out of the family studio after 1792, and he certainly worked on the first statues in St Paul’s, to John Howard and Samuel Johnson. He completed the monument to William Jones, after his father died in 1799, and signed the monument to Thomas Dundas as his own work, although the commission was won by his father. Bacon inherited a busy, successful studio and continued to win commissions which were largely carried out in a style similar, and occasionally identical to, designs produced in his father’s workshop.
The Royal Academy seem to have been less willing to accept Bacon’s credentials as a serious artist, regarding him solely as an adjunct to his father, and refused to elect him even to the role of an Associate Royal Academician in 1802, 1804, 1806 and 1811. In December 1805, when the Nelson monument was first mooted, the Royal Academy attempted unsuccessfully to have the field limited only to academicians, a stipulation that would have taken Bacon out of the running. There was certainly some bad blood between him and the oft–embittered J.C.F. Rossi, who in 1806 expressed his view that it was demeaning to compete for a statue to Marquis Wellesley in India with Bacon. He was even less happy when Bacon won the commission. Rossi’s collaborator, Robert Smirke – the designer of the Faulknor monument – said Bacon’s design would ‘disgrace the country’ (Farington, vol 7, 2704).
Rossi must, however, have been pleased that in the 1806–7 competition he was awarded the monument to Cornwallis, whilst the largest prize, the tribute to Nelson, went to the most senior artist, John Flaxman. On the same day that the contracts were given for the Nelson and the Cornwallis (29 October 1807), the contracts were signed with John Bacon Junior for the monument to Duff, and to Westmacott for the monument to Cooke. Both men were to receive £1575 for the commissions. The first instalment of £561 10s was paid out to Bacon before March 1808, when it is recorded in the parliamentary accounts.
Bacon’s design for the monument to George Duff has many of the elements that characterise his work: effortless elegance in design and finish, and iconography which oscillates between the derivative and the inspired. The artist himself gave a very pedestrian account of the iconography in 1809:
A sarcophagus, ornamented with a medallion of the deceased; Britannia decorating the tomb with a festoon of oak; and a sailor, bearing the British Naval flag, at the side of the tomb.
(Hoare 1809, p.39)
As was common in Bacon’s work, there was a certain amount of stylistic workshop repetition. In this case the figure of Britannia is a slightly altered repeat of the slinky Britannia that he had carved for the monument to Thomas Dundas (Figs 7 and 8). Her contrapposto is reversed, although the disposition of her arms, her helmet, her high waisted dress, and the turn of the head are recognisable. In its original position, high on the South pier at the entrance to the Quire, it would have been possible to see the Duff monument at a distance whilst standing in front of the Dundas. The effect would have been of a pleasant distant echo of Bacon figures, something which would have helped give a unity to the space, just as the echo of Westmacott’s Cooke composition would have chimed with the Flaxman panel of Willett Miller.
Figs 7 and 8: John Bacon Sr and Jr, Monument to Thomas Dundas, marble, 1798–1806, St Paul’s Cathedral; comparison with the figure of Britannia on the Duff monument.
Like the Cooke monument, the design also responds to its placement at the entrance to Gibbons’s Quire, a celestial box of music–inspired wood carving. The bulk of the choir carvings are in oak and are occasionally carved into the form of oak and acorn motifs (Figs 9 – 12). Gibbons’s undulating lines and festoons are continued in Bacon’s work. The composition of the Duff monument follows a serpentine line that begins at the lion’s head, swoops down and up along the lower draperies, then swoops through the festoon, up the flagpole and down the flag. These aspects of the composition which respond to the environment were lost with the later remodelling of the Quire and the removal of the monument to the Crypt.
Figs 9 and 10: Grinling Gibbons, Carving in oak and limewood, Quire, St Paul’s Cathedral, c.1696, comparison with undulations in composition with the Duff monument.
Figs 11 and 12: Grinling Gibbons, Carving in oak of oak leaves and acorns, Quire, St Paul’s Cathedral, c.1696, comparison with oak festoon on Duff monument.
Unlike the Cooke monument, Bacon’s tribute to Duff contains a portrait of the deceased, and the monument as a whole is clearly meant to have specific as well as general resonance. It isn’t clear what source Bacon used for the side–profile of Duff, although it is a lively piece of carving, with a characteristic nose and ferocious stare. The portrait is echoed in the image of the British lion, with similarly long nostrils, incised eyes, and wavy mane (Figs 13 and 14).
Figs 13 and 14: Visual comparison of the portrait of Duff and the lion’s head.
The portrait roundel was a common motif in monuments of this period, with the stern side–profile reminiscent of Roman coinage. However, the manner of Duff’s death was widely reported in the wake of Trafalgar, and the representation of his head and neck represented as separate from the rest of his body must have had special resonance. The circular frame recalls the shape of the cannonball. As Duff’s headless body was buried at sea the sarcophagus acts as a fictive tomb for a lost body. This commemorative convention features amongst several of the monuments in St Paul’s to warriors whose bodies were not brought home from the wars, as Amy Harris has noted.
Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the Duff monument is the figure of the muscled sailor (Fig. 15).
Fig. 15: Bacon, Duff.
Again, mourning figures on monuments by the Bacon family are not rarities, although they are traditionally female, as in the numerous figures of wives mourning their dead husbands on earlier monuments. Several of these figures lean on their arms and, or place the other above their head in the attitude of mourning also adopted by the tar (Figs 16 – 21).
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Figs 16 – 21: Monuments by John Bacon (Senior and Junior), featuring female mourners, compared to the Duff monument: Duff; Monument to Brigadier Henry Hope, Westminster Abbey, d.1793 (© Dean and Chapter of Westminster); Monument to Nicholas Skottowe, St Mary’s Church, Chesham (courtesy of and © Bob Speel); Bacon and Manning Monument to Arthur Tyrwhitt Drake, d. 1831; Monument to William Drake, d. 1796 (both courtesy of and © Amersham Museum); the almost identical Monument to George Gostling, St Mary Twickenham (courtesy of and © Bob Speel).
Bacon Jr’s introduction of a profoundly masculine figure presumably refers to the loyalty that Duff inspired in his crew. The poetry about Duff in the weeks after his death were specifically structured around the idea of the ‘mourning tar’ (see above) and, in the case of the Naval Chronicle’s lines, specifically his mourning son, Norwich Duff. The figure in the monument bears a slight resemblance to Norwich Duff in Raeburn’s later portrait (Fig. 22), both in the prominent jaw and the combed–forward hair, although it is perhaps a step too far to claim any certainty in this, especially as the tar seems somewhat older than Norwich’s thirteen years. Norwich would, however, have been twenty when the monument was actually erected. He was already a flag–lieutenant, and well on his way to a stellar career in the Navy which ended with him reaching the rank of Vice–Admiral. Whichever sailor it is taken to represent, or if it is merely a symbol representing every tar, it is a truly heroic figure, chunky and muscled in contrast to Britannia, sensually modelled in both the chest and the bulging arms (Fig. 23).
Figs 22 and 23: Henry Raeburn, Portrait of Norwich Duff, date unknown (although presumably after he made Commander in 1814), photograph in Tayler and Tayler 1914 (Archive.org); comparison with figure of the mourning tar on Captain Duff’s monument.
Midshipmen were not in the habit of fighting bare–chested, certainly not in the storms of Trafalgar, and the figure has been classicised through semi–nudity, the long trousers being perhaps the only nod to modern sailing conventions. Bacon was completing, at the same time as the Duff monument, a commission for a monument to Captain Edward Cooke in Westminster Abbey (Fig. 24), an officer who had died capturing a French frigate in the Bay of Bengal. Bacon had here used a similar conception, with a muscular sailor, bare–chested and in trousers, accompanying the officer. In this case the sailor takes on a Pietà role, cradling the dying officer at the point of his death and victory.
Fig. 24: John Bacon Jr, Monument to Captain Edward Cooke, 1799–1806, Westminster Abbey (14GTR via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0).
There is some passing similarity to the famous figure of the bare–chested, supplicating and kneeling African man in the famous anti–slavery medallion which was at a peak of relevance at the time (Figs 25 and 26). The anti–slavery movement was, in 1806, zealously campaigning for the outlawing of British involvement in the slave trade, a movement that resulted in the passage of the abolition law in 1807. Religious societies to which Bacon was connected, the Church Missionary Society and the Bible Society, were closely connected to the anti–slavery movement, although there is currently no evidence that Bacon was committed to that cause. The similarity of the figures may simply be generic, although when Bacon returned to the idea of an ordinary soldier distressed by the loss of a superior in the monument to Colonel Sir Henry Walton Ellis, the supplicating figure with clasped hands raised above his head has still closer similarities (Fig. 27).
Figs 25, 26 and 27: Compared to the Duff monument (Fig 24), William Hackwood Am I Not a Man and a Brother, medallion for Wedgwood, c.1787 (© Victoria and Albert Museum, London); John Bacon, Monument to Colonel Sir Henry Walton Ellis KC, d,1815 Worcester Cathedral (photo by author).
The Union Flag and the laurel wreath are both symbolic, although they also have particular resonance for Duff (Fig. 28).
Fig. 28: Bacon, Duff.
The poet in the Gentleman’s Magazine wrote that Duff and Cooke deserved warmer applause as ‘Though crowned with cypress, they deserved the bays’ (Tayler and Tayler 1914, p.267). The reference was to ancient Rome, where victims of sacrifices wore cypress, whilst victors in battles wore laurel wreaths. In Bacon’s work, the laurel crown sits waiting upon the cap of the Union flag. Duff was a sacrifice, but he was also a victor. The hanging crown also gains piquancy from the implied absence of a real head on which to place it. Numerous sources record that Duff’s corpse was covered by a Union Flag on the deck of the Mars, and the flag’s sculptured markings – representing the union of the flags of Scotland and England – all speak to Duff’s national feelings, and to his end aboard his ship.
The monument was designed to sit in a panel above the monument to Lord Nelson by Flaxman, and opposite the Cooke monument by Richard Westmacott. An image of the Cornwallis in position shows the height of the panel above (Figs 29 and 30). An identical arrangement was made opposite this for Nelson and Duff. In truth, the Duff has little in common with Westmacott’s chunky Grecian Britannia attended by playful Gibbons–esque putti, although it speaks with some sonority with Flaxman’s design to Nelson below – the notion of the exemplarity of deceased naval leaders to future generations of trousered tars unites the concept of the two works. Bacon’s willowy Britannia with plumed helmet does not jar with Flaxman’s figure of the same, although Flaxman’s has greater classical verity (Fig. 31).
Figs 29 and 30: View under the dome of St Paul’s, from Ellis 1818, with detail of the same, from Dugdales History of St Paul’s…, 1818(public domain via Archive.org).
Fig. 31: the original arrangement at the entrance to the Quire, with John Bacon the Younger Monument to George Duff, 1807. Duff stood above John Flaxman, Monument to Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson, installed 1818, whilst Cooke was above J.C.F. Rossi Monument to Lord Cornwallis, installed c.1819.
Monument Execution and Reception
Bacon had a lot of work under hand in 1807, as he had very effectively grown his inherited business. In 1809 he reported to Prince Hoare that he had a statue of the Duke of Bedford, the statues of Wellesley for Calcutta and Cornwallis for Bombay, and a monument to Lord Lavington for Antigua. He also had a range of more common–or–garden monuments for churches that he supplied steadily to private clients.
Unusually, Bacon decided in 1808 to hand over the day–to–day running of his workshop to a fellow student from the RA, Charles Manning. In an agreement of June 1808, which was found and published by Ann Saunders (née Cox–Johnson) in 1959, Manning bought a quarter of the workshop’s designs, marble and stock, and agreed to manage the whole business in Bacon’s name. Under the contract Bacon didn’t have to attend the workshop any more than he saw fit but would continue to receive three–quarters of the profits. It was the first of many signs during Bacon’s career that, although he was a gifted and capable artist, he had a low boredom threshold, and preferred not to get too involved in everyday affairs. Although he continued to compete for public monuments, most notably his revolutionary design for the monument to John Moore, he diversified into a large property empire, public activities, religious causes, and writing. He effectively retired to a country house near Exeter in his early forties.
A journeyman carver, Henry Sibson, later recalled that he worked in the Bacon studio in around 1808–1815, which would have been at the time of the Duff commission. Sibson attended a religious school connected to Bentinck Chapel run by the evangelical Rev. Basil Woodd. Bacon, who was a subscriber and a pillar of the Chapel, was told of the boy’s interest in sculpture, and after a month’s trial Sibson became a pupil at the works with 4s a week. Sibson noted that ‘contrary to the custom of artists Bacon had a partner a Mr Charles Manning, they had studied together in the Royal Academy, Mr Manning being the acting master’ (Henry Sibson’s Autobiography, MS Tate Archive and Library 9919.1–7, vol. 2). The monument to Duff, therefore, was designed by Bacon but produced during this period in which the workshop was run by Manning. According to Sibson, Manning and his family were rigid dissenters, and brought other dissenters into the works as pupils. Bacon was a committed evangelical, a lay–preacher, and a staunch advocate for the Bible Society. The character of the two proprietors created a studio environment bustling with theological conversations, and fiery evangelicalism, which Sibson utterly despised.
The Duff–Manning partnership yielded a good many commissions for St Paul’s Cathedral. As well as Bacon’s future success for the Moore monument, Manning won the commission for the monument to George Hardinge in his own right, and then another with his younger brother Samuel Manning for the monument to Mackenzie and Langwerth. Samuel was a senior pupil at the works, along with Josephus Kendrick, who was also able to pick up a couple of commissions, to William Myers and General Robert Ross.
As one might expect of a well–manned business, the execution of the monument to Duff is very professional and impressive (Fig. 32).
Fig. 32: Bacon, Duff.
The details are designed to be read from a distance, so the lion’s mane is rendered with broad curls, and the folds of the tar’s trousers are indicated through sharp and distinct triangles, echoed in the rendering of the rocky base. The tar’s ripped musculature, too, is impressive still from a distance, and there is, overall, a strong serpentine composition and a lack of fussiness, without the clunking scale of the Cooke. The marble used is of a high quality, and the surfaces are rendered distinctly to indicate different textures: fur, cloth, stone and muscle (Figs 33, 34 and 35).
Figs 33, 34 and 35: Monument details showing renderings of different textures.
Probably because of the impressive extent of the commissions under hand at the Bacon–Manning workshop, the monument to George Duff was not completed until 1812. The Naval Chronicle, as ever, covered the news, and featured an engraving of typically questionable quality as a frontispiece for 1812 (Fig. 36).
Fig. 36: Naval Chronicle, vol. 28, July–December 1812, frontispiece and title page (public domain via Archive.org).
The journal was laconic in its description of the engraving by Mr Hall, their usual engraver, as a ‘Representation of the monument, designed and executed by G. Bacon [sic], which has been erected in St Paul’s Cathedral, to the memory of Captain George Duff, RN, who fell in the battle of Trafalgar’ (Naval Chronicle, vol. 28, July–December 1806, p.506).
There is little else in the way of critical commentary on the monument after its erection. It seems to have been put in place second in the sequence of memorials at the entrance to the Quire. Westmacott’s Cooke was erected in later 1811, and Cornwallis and Nelson were not to follow until 1818–19. Maria Hackett in 1815 noted the empty space on the south side of the Quire, but reassured the reader that it ‘is destined to receive a Monument, by Mr Flaxman, to the memory of the late LORD NELSON’. The panel above, however, contained:
Mr Bacon’s Monument of CAPTAIN DUFF, who fell at Trafalgar. The Design represents BRITANNIA decorating a Sarcophagus with laurel, against which is placed a Medallion of the deceased hero; while a British Sailor, bearing the Naval flag, is lamenting the loss of his Commander.
(Hackett 1815, p.40)
A very beautiful Flaxmanesque engraving after Henry Corbould featured in Henry Ellis’s 1818 edition of Dugdale’s St Paul’s (Figs 37, 38 and 39). The volume included engravings made of the Nelson and Cornwallis in the sculptor’s studios and provided the first depiction of all four of the works as an ensemble.
Figs 37, 38 and 39: Bacon, Duff; C. Heath, engraved after drawings by Henry Corbould, Ellis, 1818 – Monument to Captain Duff; and full page, showing the monuments to Captain Duff and Admiral Nelson (public domain, Archive.org).
Ellis was not effusive about the work, describing it as ‘answering’ the monument to Cooke. ‘The principal figure in the design represents Britannia decorating a sarcophagus with laurel,’ he wrote (incorrectly), ‘while a sailor, who bears the naval flag, laments the loss of his commander’ (Ellis 1818, p.206). It is possible that at a height the oak in the garland is not discernible, because subsequent guidebooks by Cummings, Sykes, Smyth and Leef repeat the error that the leaves are laurels, as does the 1844 Visitor’s Guide. These guides sometimes contain illustrations of the monument, all in fairly naïve rendering (Figs 40 and 41).
Figs 40 and 41: Monument to Captain Duff, from Sykes, 1839 (public domain, Archive.org); Monument to Captain Duff, from Leef, 1853, pp.16–17 (public domain, Google Books).
As noted, there doesn’t appear to be much early critical commentary on the work. The Illustrated London News in 1852 gave a fairly broad critique of all of the sculpture in St Paul’s, in which the monument was swept up:
The pair of Trafalgar panel reliefs, by Westmacott and Bacon, to Captain’s Cooke and Duff, the principal figure in each being Britannia, are of the same conventional class.
(Illustrated London News 13 November 1852, p.423)
The Illustrated London News was fairly typical of mid–nineteenth–century views on the Napoleonic sculpture of St Paul’s, which was increasingly seen as dated and mired in unnecessary classical allegory.
Later Moves and Historiography
In 1859 the monument to Duff was moved. On 18 November that year, the Dean and Chapter considered a plan by the Surveyor FC Penrose to rearrange the Quire ‘desirable for the admission of a larger portion of the public to the ordinary worship, and for the architectural effect’ (Chapter Minutes 1833–60, f.413). The idea was to remove the organ – which then cut off the Quire from the rest of the church – to the side of the Quire, thus opening up the view all the way down the nave to the altar. This was in keeping with the improved attendance at services and the desire to attract more worshippers, who could not crowd into the small space for services. Penrose claimed that this had been Sir Christopher Wren’s original vision. In January 1860, the Dean and Chapter convened a committee including the Dean, Archdeacon Hale; the architect Sir Charles Barry; and the former Surveyor C.R. Cockerell. The plan was approved subject to the necessary funds on 18 January 1860.
The new arrangement required the removal of the monuments from the position just in front of the Quire. The monuments to Nelson and Cornwallis were removed to face each other in the South Transept where they remain today. Banks’s Burges and Rossi’s Faulknor were removed to new places (the nave and the North Transept respectively) in order to make way for them. The panels that were made to stand with the Nelson, those to his deceased comrades at Trafalgar, were not placed above the monuments in their new positions in the South Transept as one might expect. Instead, they were removed to the crypt where they were placed at the West Bay of Nelson’s Chamber. This placement was, of course, entirely appropriate for the monuments to two of Nelson’s devoted Captains, who died serving under him.
The monument was removed from its frame, which seems to have been fairly roomy, to an unframed position on a new Portland stone wall–mounted pedestal, to match that opposite to Cooke. In aesthetic terms the placing at close quarters does the monument mixed favours. Closer viewing shows the carving detail to have been extremely good, and the quality of the marble and finish certainly much better than the Westmacott opposite. There is little danger, for instance, of mistaking the oak garland for laurel, with its finely carved, distinctive leaves and perfect little acorns, its rounded leaves reflecting the curls in Duff’s hair (Fig. 42). The surly lion is finished right down to the whisker–holes of his upper lip (Fig. 43). At the same time not all of the close viewing is beneficial: the lower position reveals the extended curved neck of Britannia, employed to stand out from the wall so as to be seen better from below and to the right, as the viewer walked down the aisle towards the Quire. The neck now looks distinctly strange in a frontal viewing (Fig. 44).
Figs 42, 43 and 44: Bacon, Duff – monument details showing carving and finishes.
One interesting feature at close proximity is a visible, perfectly circular repair, which has been made to what was presumably an area of mechanical damage or unsightly marble. The Pantheons project hasn’t yet encountered any record of repairs in the Cathedral to this work, so it is possibly a replaced section present in the original, that Manning thought would not have been viewable in its original position (Fig. 45). A crack has developed in the Union Jack, and there are paint splatters from the periodic decoration of the crypt walls. The construction of the monument from its several pieces is well–hidden, although it is plainly evident up close that the rocky base came in four parts, which have been cut with overhanging elements to conceal the join (Fig. 46). The left and right sections of the monument are carved separately, as is the central sarcophagus and inscription tablet, and pieced together. Another interesting sculptural feature is the marks of the carving tools in the base, purposefully left rough to effect the impression of rock (Fig. 47). These give a curiously tangible connection to the apprentices in the Bacon workshop, as these are marks perhaps made by an established assistant like Kendrick, or even the 10–year–old Henry Sibson.
Figs 45, 46 and 47: Bacon, Duff – monument details showing construction and repairs.
The monument has garnered little modern academic comment. It is noted without much comment by Hoock and Yarrington. The work did, however, catch the eye of Ann Saunders, who also located the important documentation of Bacon’s workshop. Praising its ‘magnificently muscled sailor’, she described the work as ‘graceful and elegant’, which still serves as a fair description (Saunders 2003, p.144). Although we will not be able to appreciate its original effect again, there is still a lot of pleasure to be derived from close viewing of Bacon’s monument to George Duff. There is subtle pathos in the references to Duff’s violent end, and his grieving crew and child, and there is much to admire in the professional and varied carving of its elements.
By Greg Sullivan.
Bibliography
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