vi
:2
g:
...J ...J
IJ.l
~
0
:i:
>-
"'IJ.l ~
:=i
0
u
"USS Olympia, Hong Kong, J898." Commodore George Dewey's flagship, the protected cruiser USS Olympia, was at Hong Kong in February 1898 at the outbreak of the SpanishAmerican War. She is seen moored off the Royal Navy dockyard-the graceful Victorian buildings to the right. Note the massive sheerlegs on the quay used for hoisting. Olympia survives today as a museum ship on the Philadelphia wate1front.
The Marine Watercolors of
Ian Marshall An architect's attention to detail and an historian's sense of moment inform Ian Marshall's watercolors.
by Kevin Haydon
24
R
eturn to the age of iron and steam, imperial navies and gunboat diplomacy, and you may find that marine artist Ian Marshall has been there before you, with both a painter's brush and an author's pen. An architect and latter-day marine watercolorist, Marshall has over the last ten years produced an extensive suite of paintings depicting a subject of personal fascination-the period of prolific change in naval design that began with the early ironclads, continued through the ascendancy of the armored ship and ended with the demise of "big gun" supremacy. Images of iron and steam sailing ships, dreadnoughts , and other early 20th century battleships all share a place in thjs colorful painter's panoply, which is the basis for Marshall's three richly detailed books: Ironclads and Paddlers (1993), Armored Ships (1990), and British Capital Ships (1987). At 61 years of age, and after 30 years of international practice as an architect, Scottish-born Marshall is happily settled on beautiful Mt. Desert Island, Maine. While his oceanfront home may be distant from naval activity of any sort, the steady traffic of Maine fishing boats, windjammers and pleasure boats in and out of nearby Southwest Harbor is a form of inspiration. A special treat, the 1994 WoodenBoat Show, held upharbor
thi s year, was a "feast" enjoyed by Marshall from the aesthetic distance of deckchairs-a sketch pad at the ready. Marshall 's interest in ships and the sea was vested by an upbringing in Dunfermline, near Edinburgh on the Firth of Forth. "We were close to Rosyth, the principal Royal Navy base and dockyard on the east coast of Britain," explains Marshall. "I watched warships cornjng and going during World War II and went aboard some of them. And I had relatives in the Navy. A cousin, Captain RoynonJones RN, who had been navigating officer in Beatty 's flagship HMS Lion at the battles of the Dagger Bank and Jutland, was Marine Superintendent of the Forth Conservancy (roughly the equivalent of the US Coast Guard). " Many of Marshall 's paintings have the poignant and often charged atmosphere of an historic moment. "I am intrigued by history ," he says, "particularly the political or strategic significance behind the presence of a certain ship in a certain place at a certain time, and especiall y events within the lifetime of parents and grandparents, about which one could hear contemporary personal accounts and visuali ze the circumstances. I remember seeing the wreck of the German cruiser SMS Konigsberg which was sunk in the Rufiji River in Tanzania in SEA HISTORY 71, AUTUMN 1994