Sailor's Valentines

Boat Building and Marine Engineering

Wildfowling, Marshmen and Inland Waterways

Sailors' Crafts

Index

Introduction

Sailors made a wide variety of crafts utilising the skills which they needed on board to maintain and repair the vessel. They usually used materials which were readily available such as canvas, rope and whalebone. The objects made were small or could be packed away easily, so as not to take up too much of the precious cramped living space. There were times aboard when there were periods of inactivity and the production of crafts helped to pass the time.

Woolwork pictures are an example of sailors crafts. A broadside view of a vessel with local features in the background was outlined in ink on sailcloth, and then embroidered with a limited palette of colours. Sailors were using needlework skills which were needed to repair sails and clothing. As sailors knew the sails, rigging and parts of a ship, the vessels were executed with accuracy. When the pcitures were not being worked on they could easily be rolled up and stowed away.

The embroidery skills were self-taught, and the pieces were created for the mariner's own satisfaction or as gifts for loved ones.

Other examples of sailors' crafts include dolls made by lightshipmen aboard lightvessels. The legs and arms were animated by means of a pull-cord and the dolls were sold to tourists in the summer months who were taken out to the lightships on excursions.

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Sailors' Crafts

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Sailor's Valentines

A modern reproduction of a typical sailor's valentine of the 18th Century

Sailor's valentine 1

SAILORS’ VALENTINES

Sailors’ Valentines are the hexagonal shell designs which sailors returning from the West Indies supposedly put together using attractively shaped and coloured shells collected from the Caribbean to present to their wives or girlfriends when they reached home

During the 18^th and early 19^th centuries sailors returning from the West Indies frequently brought back with them what became known as Sailors’ Valentines. These were symmetrical arrangements of small attractively shaped and coloured shells. They were set in a shallow hexagonal wooden tray, usually provided with a hinged lid and about 300 to 400 mm across. The arrangement was often concave in shape, i.e. dipping slightly towards the centre. In the centre there was often a heart shape or a loving message to the recipient, the sailor’s wife or girlfriend, picked out in shells.

The sailor would presumably claim that he had skilfully assembled the arrangement himself while on the return voyage to England, using shells which he had personally collected from a Caribbean beach. However, it is clear that most of them were made in the West Indies for sale and were probably chosen “off the shelf”, with the exception of any personalised message which could be added to order.

The original artefacts have become keenly sought by collectors and are rarely offered for sale. The examples which are displayed in the Peter Coke Shell Gallery are reproductions based on the original designs. Peter Coke began his interest in shell artwork by first repairing and subsequently reproducing Sailors’ Valentines.