Hendrick Busmann's "Sovereign of the Seas, Die Skulpturen des britishen Königsshiffes von 1637"

[Kenchington]

Does any kindly soul on MSW have access to Hendrick Busmann's 2002 book "Sovereign of the Seas, Die Skulpturen des britishen Königsshiffes von 1637" (Hamburg, Deutsches Schiffahrtsmuseum Bremerhaven und Covent Verlag), along with the ability to read the German text and a little time to fill me in on Busman's conclusions?

 

Used copies of the book go for $200 and up, which is more than I am willing to pay for a book that I couldn't read!

 

A bit of background:

 

A couple of years back, I got interested in unravelling the many misunderstandings that have grown up around Sovereign of the Seas (the 1638 ship of that name). I have slowly been pulling information together into a sort of extended essay and I thought that the last published study I would need was Janice Valls-Russell's 2021 chapter on Heywood's contributions to the ship. I have finally got hold of that through interlibrary loan, only to find that she confined her study to Heywood's booklet (originally intended as a commemorative piece for the launching pageant that never happened). For the carvings on the ship, Valls-Russell refers readers to Busmann's work.

 

I have access to all of the original evidence and I don't need yet another re-telling of the ship's story (and certainly not if it is as erroneous as most that have come before!). I have even managed to identify a lot of the imagery in the carvings: Zodiacal signs, trophies of arms, symbols of Charles' four kingdoms, the special feature of Charles as King Edgar (the supposed Sovereign of the Sea), gods of wind and wave, etc. etc. Valls-Russell's work on Heywood's booklet has let me recognize the half-hidden allusions to the myth of Jason and the Argonauts, beyond the two large figures on the tafferel (e.g. the sorceress Medea in her chariot, being drawn by dragons, along with Aphrodite in hers, drawn by swans). However, I suspect that Busmann's knowledge of 17th Century sculpture will have let him detect things in the Payne engraving or the "van de Velde" drawing (which wasn't by either of the van de Veldes) that are just a blur to me. Hence my interest in what he concluded.

 

Very, very many thanks in advance, for anyone who can help me out!

 

 

Trevor

[GrandpaPhil]

I don’t have the book, but many translator apps will enable one to take a picture of the page and it will translate directly onto the picture, replacing the original text with English, if you decide to get the book.

 

I did that for a German book on the Wappen Von Hamburg, with the plans in the back of the book, and it worked well enough to get the gist of what was being written.

Edited Thursday at 10:52 AM by GrandpaPhil

[Kenchington]

Thanks, GrandpaPhil!

 

The nearest I have come to that involved typing Danish text into GoogleTranslate. That worked but it was painful! Another time, I will follow your advice and see what I can do with scans.

 

Meanwhile, I aim to tidy up my existing draft and make it available as "Version 1", subject to revision if and when more information emerges.

 

Trevor

[armchair seafarer]

I have got a digital copy of Busmann's book. Living in Germany, I was able to borrow it from an university library. Hendrik Busmann is an art historian, and the study on the Sovereign of the Seas was his doctoral thesis. Accordingly, this is serious academic stuff with plenty of footnotes. The book is lavishly illustrated, which explains the rather prohibitive prices for which it is on sale. While Busmann gives an overview over the building of the ship and its service history, its mostly devoted to an analysis of the iconographic programme that lies behind its many sculptures. Busmann analyses the over thousand carvings from the figurehead to the taffrail in the wider context of art history. For this reason I think that you might find answers to some of your questions in it. 

 

Perhaps you can write me an email for further discussions. 

[Kenchington]

Thank you, Armchair Seafarer! I will try sending a personal message through this website, though I haven't used that aspect of MSW yet, so I may go astray.

 

I have a pretty good grasp on most aspects of the Sovereign, from Charles' objectives in ordering her construction, through her role in Court masques and public pageants to her failure as a seagoing ship. It would be useful if Busmann has cited hard evidence for some of the more dubious claims made for the ship (ones that I tend to set aside but cannot entirely reject), but at this stage I'm mostly interested in what a specialist can deduce of her as an artwork. I can see much for myself but art history is not my thing!

 

A doctoral thesis will probably be exactly what I'm looking for.

 

Trevor