Seawitch Artist

All ships carry House, or company flags, with Tea Clippers they became large affairs on what were certainly prestigious ships.
The company that owned Sea Witch was Howland & Aspinwall, an adventurous concern that built the first clippers and later the Panama railroad that crossed the isthmus where the Panama Canal now runs.
Willaim H. Aspinwall was a great promoter of animal rights in America and sponsor of the Metropolitan museum of Art in New York. 

The Tea Clipper Sea Witch

The Sea Witch was built by the firm Smith & Dimon of New York for owners Howland & Aspinwall, in 1846, and placed under the command of the infamous Captain Robert Bully Waterman.
The year before, the same builders and owners had created the clipper ship Rainbow, the first of the Yankee Tea Clippers, with the so called Baltimore bow that gave it concave bows that some thought couldn‘t sail.
These ships where built to carry the high value cargo of China Tea very quickly so speed, not capacity was the main influence in their design.
The Sea Witch sailed from New York to Hong Kong in just 74 days in 1849, a record for sail not broken until 2003.
On March 26th Sea Witch was wrecked off Cuba in a declined condition carrying Chinese coolies ….a sad end for such a beautiful ship!

Shark Fin Soup

What is China's national dish, Shark Fin soup? The way China's new rich are persistently demanding it and others are under acute pressure to supply it at events like weddings and banquets one could easily think so. Once the food of Chinese Emperors, it's new popularity is putting the worlds shark population under so much pressure they could soon go the same way as Chinese Emperors....extinct. 
Nobody knows how many ten of millions of sharks are being caught on long lines only for their fins, often these are cut off and the living sharks torso pushed back into the sea to die slowly in that condition, the process of shark finning is a brutal business that cannot be allowed to go on. 

Please pass a link to this picture to friends and Chinese concerns.

http://seawitchartist.com/shark-fin-soup.htm 

A lone shark struggles on the snood of a pelagic long-line, alone and not one of scores because this painting depicts the last shark, anywhere. The remorseless demand for shark fin soup just will not slow down as a huge rising Chinese middle class craves the ‘class’ attached to it, and also the pathetic claims of it being an aphrodisiac and more. Protective legislation is slow to emerge and hard to enforce, the staggering price of shark’s fin involves it with corruption and organized crime. 

Only if Shark’s fin soup is driven out of fashion will the killing stop, the object of these paintings is to help that happen.

Please pass a link to this picture to friends and Chinese concerns.

Download a high resolution image: Print it on your tea-shirt. images/shark-finning.jpg

Alina, the Rainbow sail boat

This is one of many children’s books illustrations I painted and drew for a series by German author Christa Muths, to be published in 2008, an update on that will follow here.

The painting is of the living and rainbow coloured sail boat Alina,  her builder waving her on from the hot air balloon above.

All in all,  a very refreshing topic for me, and at least one of them had to be here!

Beachcomber

A photo from a beachcomber friend on America’s Gulf coast inspired this

painting of a beachcombing Herring gull under a threatening sky.

'Hurricane at Sea'

Hurricane at Sea, the forces of nature at one of her extremes is portrayed here for a Ships Officer who had sent in photographs of this storm, however I’m no stranger to this kind of weather either , so I found the painting of it  bringing back memories!

'Home of Aphrodite' 

A Herring Gull at the Southern limits of it's range passes over the Rock of Romiou in Cyprus, where the Goddess of Love Aphrodite was born in the Sea foam.

All Sea birds are sacred to Aphrodite.

20 x 16 inch Acrylic on canvas

'The Captain Reincarnate'

If there's one bird above all that would have me and others leaning on the stern rail of whatever ship I was on to watch it's the Albatross, a great ship follower, if a bit comical touching down, nothing is more graceful.
Sea lore has it that each Sailor who dies at Sea will return reincarnate as one whatever else happens after.
The painting here is called 'The Captain reincarnate' it depicts the return of a dead Captain who has returned to his ship at sea, obsessed with it's progress, which is perilous given the trade it is plying. 
Those that would know will recognise the House flag she flies as that of the infamous Jardine Matheson line.
They were in the India to China Opium trade, the small but very fast ship is a two mast schooner, fast because Pirates and Authorities alike wanted that cargo.
This company also possessed the only square rigged ship in that trade, the Falcon when the Jardine Matheson Co realised that Tea was just the right return cargo of that day, the Clipper era had begun, they put it into the Tea trade also, to this day many people still think that the entire Tea Clipper fleet was involved in Opium also, not so.

Acrylic on canvas 16 x 12 in

'Two Endangered Species'

The plight of the Roseate Tern and the British Merchant Navy are brought together here!

Acrylic on board 16 x 12 in