Title: American homes and gardens
Identifier: americanhomesgar91912newy (find matches)
Year: 1905 (1900s)
Authors:
Subjects: Architecture, Domestic; Landscape gardening
Publisher: New York : Munn and Co
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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420 AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS December, 1912
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Model of an antique ship, worked out to reduced scale in all details Antique Ship Models By Robert H. Van Court Photographs by T. C. Turner and Others ^4 tX;Vfl;-1..,a," .' .- ~C HERE is no chapter of history more fas- cinating than that in which are written the achievements of the men who go down to sea in ships. The story begins with the days when Egypt, Greece or Phoenecia ruled the sea, or as much of the ocean as was then known. Then the proud galleys of imperial Rome had their long day, and the time most brilliant of all was during the later centuries, when Venice ruled the Mediterranean and when the navies of France, Spain, England and Holland contended for supremacy upon the high seas, when the pride of Spain went down before the power of England in the sixteenth century or when, in the seventeenth century, the Dutch Admiral Van Tromp swept insolently up and down the English Channel. Those were the days when the achievements and victories of armies upon the land ap- peared extremely trivial compared with the attainments of navies upon the water. Much of the romance of these and other picturesque days is expressed by the models of vessels of different periods of history which grateful seamen have offered at shrines and altars after rescue from the perils of the deep. In cathedrals, churches and chapels in Norway, Sweden and other countries upon the Baltic the model vessels hang sus- pended from the ceiling, placed there by fishermen and mariners as tokens of thanksgiving for escape from ship- wreck, and the church upon the little island of Heligoland in the North Sea is filled with them. This is but one form of expression of the same spirit which existed in earlier centuries, for the temple of Neptune in Rome was hung with the sea-stained garments of mariners escaped from drowning, garments offered as votive gifts to the god of the sea. The effect of miniature vessels hung amid the arches of churches and chapels no doubt suggested this form of deco- ration in places where there would be sufficient height for the proper placing of such ships-in-little. In the library of a New York business man is placed what he calls his "navy." Here are hung miniature models of the vessels of many nations and countries. A quaint fleet which extends in end- less procession about a large room give more than a hint of the history of navigation, together with a suggestion of its mystery and romance. Here are represented the galleons in which the buccaneers of old plundered cities and towns

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