The British Jack Tar
The British Jack Tar
An element of Gillray's pillar that calls for a reexamination is the ship worker in the middle of the pillar. Identifiable by his stripped paints and wooden shoes, scholars have previously attributed the sailor with a French identity [1]. However, it is arguable that Gillray was truly trying to represent a British ‘Jack Tar,’ and more specifically the Duke of Clarence.
Throughout the 1600s British naval officers used the word ‘tar’ to describe lower ranking seamen. An intrinsic element of life at sea, barrels of tar were stored on board for the waterproofing and protection of the ship, defending against shipworm attacks and preventing ropes from rotting against the damaging sea elements. Encompassing all aspects of ship life—even the skin and clothing of the seamen who used it to waterproof their hats and coats—‘tar’ became a familiar term for a sailor [2].
The origin of the name ‘Jack’ is disputed, but as a familiar nickname for John, it was frequently used as a generic name for sailors of the common masses [3]. In art, the term ‘Jack Tar’ first appears in William Hogarth’s 1756 print The Invasion Plate 1: France. Verses beneath the print written by David Garrick read, “See John the Soldier, Jack the Tar, With Sword & Pistol arm’d for War" [4].
Gillray produced multiple caricatures of the British Jack Tar before and after A Design for Naval Pillar. Most notably, his 1795 print A True British Tar depicts the Duke of Clarence and provides evidence for an ulterior identity of the sailor inthe fictive pillar. Dressed as a Jack Tar, the Duke is not only condemned for his Bond-street activities and extramarital affairs, but also for his failed attempts to establish prominence as a naval leader [5]. Having been rejected repeatedly for a command at sea by the Board of Admiralty, the Duke approached his father King George III and requested to be appointed the First Lord of Admiralty. Met with a firm refusal, he continued petitioning for placement as command of the Mediterranean fleet. Sharply rebuffed again, the Duke was assigned to the lower status of command of the militia [6].
A True British Tar can therefore be read as a mockery against the Duke of Clarence’s unsuccessful naval attempts while simultaneously foreshadowing the failures of his future naval endeavors. Rather than appearing as a high-ranking officer, as a royal would have expected to be, Gillray demotes him to a pouting seaman of the common masses. Throughout the 1790s, body size became a noticeable tool Gillray employed to identify those of the upper class whose behavior negatively effected the general British population. Gillray therefore dressed the Duke in the garb of a Jack Tar and used corpulence to identity his sluggish and immoral character, as well as his lack of authority.
[1] British historian Mary Dorothy George (1878-1971) who compiled the last seven volumes of the Catalogue of Political and Personal Satire Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum developed a large part of the scholarship on the ‘golden age’ of British satirical printmaking and its leading artists James Gillray, Thomas Rowlandson and George Cruikshank. George identified the sailor as a French individual and many scholars have followed her reading.
[2] Roy and Leslie Adkins, Jack the Tar. Life in Nelson’s Army (Great Britain: Little, Brown, 2009), xxix.
[3] Ibid, xxviii.
[4] Ibid.
[5] R.H. Evans and Thomas Wright, Historical and Descriptive Account of the Caricatures of James Gillray (London: Benjamin Blom, 1851), 64.
[6] Christopher Hibbert, George IV Prince of Wales, 1762-1811 (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1971), 177.