William John Huggins (1781-1845)
The Hon. Company's ship Sir David Scott, at the entrance of the Straits of Sunda, 1831
with indistinct inscription 'Mrs Corban(?)' and with National Maritime Museum inventory label on the stretcher
oil on canvas
52¹⁄₂ x 68⁵⁄₈in. (133.3 x 174.3cm.)
Engraved in aquatint by E. Duncan, published by the artist, London, 1833, as 'The H.C.S. Sir David Scott, Captn D. I. Ward, at the entrance of the Straights of Sunda. Febry 1830'.

Huggins paints the East Indiaman furling its Royals and coming to anchor as a Javanese proa (which looks to have borrowed from Thomas and William Daniell's plate 'Malaye Proas' in the Daniells' Picturesque Voyage to India published in 1810) flying a Dutch flag approaches, with monkeys, a cockatoo and caged local fauna to trade with the sailors on board. The Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra was the passage for virtually all East India trade as it made its way to the Indian Ocean. Its strategic importance was acknowledged when the French Republic declared war on Britain and the Dutch Republic in 1793 in the Sunda Strait campaign of January 1794. The region was first recorded by a professional western artist when John Webber painted on Krakatoa in the Strait (the volcanic island visible in Huggins's oil on the horizon) on the return of Cook's third voyage in 1780, and by Thomas and William Daniell on their voyages to and from India and China in 1785 and 1793-4. Anjere (Anyer) Point, the victualling station and trading post on the Strait, would be obliterated by the cataclysmic eruption of Krakatoa in 1883.

The Sir David Scott (1342 tons) was one of the largest of the Company's ships, built in the yard of Jabez Bayley at Ipswich for Joseph Hare. She was launched on 21 September 1821 and named for the East India Company director Sir David Scott (1782-1851). She sailed to Bengal and China on her first voyage for the Company in December 1821. The East Indiaman sailed out from the Downs under the command of Captain David James Ward on her fifth voyage to Madras, Bengal and China (as depicted here by Huggins) on 25 April 1830, and returned to her Moorings in May 1831. The date on the aquatint, 'Febry 1830' is incorrect, the passage through the Strait dating to her return journey in 1831, as described when exhibited at the British Institution in 1832. She made just one more voyage to the east in 1832 before being laid up in 1834 and sold for breaking up in 1838. The ship's journals, ledgers and pay books are in the British Library: Asian and African Studies (L/MAR/B/33).

Huggins was in the employ of the East India Company and sailed on voyages to China and India in the early 1800s. Described by the engraver W. J. Linton as ‘a jolly, fat, good-natured fellow, who had been a ship’s cook’ (Memories, 1895, ch.3) he is recorded as a steward and assistant to the purser on the Perseverance which sailed for Bombay and China in 1812, returning in 1814. Soon after, he set up a studio to work on commissions for the Company in Leadenhall Street, near to the East India Company offices. He specialised in ship portraits with many subjects Company ships set in scenery from their voyages to the east, imagery, as here, which Huggins himself must have sketched on his own earlier voyaging. His brother-in-law, Edward Duncan, collaborated on and engraved his paintings (see lot 71). There is a brown wash study of this subject by Huggins (for his aquatint) in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (PAH8479).

National Maritime Museum, London, acquired c. 1949-51; sale [The Trustees of the National Maritime Museum], Christie’s, South Kensington, 15 May 1997, lot 337.

Concise Catalogue of Oil Paintings in the National Maritime Museum, Woodbridge, 1988, p. 221, no. BHC3638.

London, The British Institution, 1832, no. 121.

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