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Figurehead for the clipper Morning Light, launched in 1853 (Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum) came to Montreal with his parents after the Napoleonic wars. There, he and his young siblings were soo n stranded as a result of the untimely deaths of both parents . Returning to Ireland, the children were cared for by their mother's fami ly in Dublin . Ir is not known what formal education John may have received, but as a young adult he answered hi s older brother's urging to follow him to America. In Boston, John trained as a shi pcarver, likely under Laban Beecher, a promin ent carver of the 1800s. Beecher and Mason shared working quarters at 8 North Market Street. In 1839, Maso n was able to buy Beecher's shop when Beecher moved his location to Comm ercial Street. The relationship berween the rwo was strong, as revealed by the warm invitation to John to hold his wedding to Martha Daniels in 1838 in Laban's hom e. John and Martha were a devo ted cou ple and had three boys, ofwhomonlyone lived to maturity. UponMartha'sdeathin 1845, John endured almost uncontrollable grief. Hi s loss was shared with Sarah Elizabeth Warren, Martha's closest friend, and Sarah's brother, Samuel Dennis Warren , founder of the successful S. D. Warren Paper Co. in W estbrook, Maine. In 1846, John and
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Sarah m arried and eventually had four children. Their first child was nam ed Martha D aniels Mason for John's first wife. John 's reputation as a shipcarver grew markedly through the late 1840s and early 1850s, in tandem with the development of the clipper ship. We are fortunate that several of Mason 's drawings have survived and are preserved in the collection of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. Jane L. Port, Research Assistant, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, comments on th is vi ta! resource: Many carvers drew their proposals in the sawdust on the ship floor or simply ve rb ali zed their intentions. Subsequently, drawings of figureheads are relati vely rare and those that do exist often indicate only a rudimentary skill in drawing. John W. Mason's pen cil and ink and wash drawings are on comm o n paper, perhaps even recycled paper. H owever, they are detailed and elegant exp ressions that indicate a fin e draughtsman who at so me point in his career may well have received academic training .... There is great variety and imagination in his choice of imagery as well as a sense of history.
So far as can be determined there are no extant Mason figureheads ,* so we do not know how his vision on paper was realized in wood. The unstinting praise of co ntemporary journalists provides som e evidence that his talent as a carver was equal to his skill as a draftsman . A year after the appearance of the Witch ofthe Wave, the Boston Atlas praised Mason's figurehead on the Cali fornia packet Ellen Foster, which rep resented the owner's wife: A full-length figure of the lady placed to correspond to the rake of the bow-foot slightly advanced, left hand on her waist in front with posey, whi le her right hand by her side holds a wreath, painted white with touches of gilding. Best executed figure we have seen on the bow of any ship-a lifelike embodiment. In 1853 a new firm in Porrsmourh, Tobey and Littlefield, called upon Mason to fashion the figurehead for its first ship,
*A figurehead of Jenny Lind from the clipper Nightingale of 1851 may have been carved by Maso n. Ir came to li ght in 1994 through Swedish antiques dealer Karl-Eric Svardskog, who is publishin g a book on his find in May 2001. Furth er stud y is needed to determine its origins.
SEA HISTORY 96, SPRING 2001