Despite their intent as modern mechanized killing machines, the new naval vessels of the late 19th and very early 20th centuries retained some naval conventions that seem quaint to us, from the oak-paneled officer's quarters and chintz curtains to the decorative figureheads and cast-iron scrollwork carried bow and stern as a nod to naval convention. These were carried to more fanciful degrees in some of the Continental navies than the Royal Navy, but still occasional erupted in decorative exuberance in H.M. ships of war. At the dawn of the ironclad era, the first British ironclad frigate, HMS Warrior of 1860 had a clipper bow bearing a particularly fine figurehead of a cavalier with sword and shield; the original carving was damaged over the years and the one on the ship now is a careful reproduction, invoking the warrior spirit wich animates this great man-o'-war. At right is the bow of HMS Minotaur of 1863, the Royal Navy's largest class of armored frigates derived from the Warrior. This spirited depiction of the Royal coat of arms lacks only the lion and the unicorn. This deficiency was duly noted, and the missing beasts were added to the Minotaur's sister-ship HMS Agincourt.

The fanciful crest of HMS Barfleur, completed 1894, was replete with a roaring British lion atop the shield. More common was a mere flourish of decorative scrollwork at bow and stern as in the USS Maine of 1895: a stars-and-stripes shield surrounded by conventional foliate flourishes in gilt-bronze. One would think the U.S. would be more restrained in such purely frivolous expressions, but in fact the study of American naval frou-frou unearths a rich variety of ornamental metalwork and small figureheads which do no discredit to American craftsmanship, but are imitative of European practice. The results of our survey of U.S. Navy figureheads are presented on U.S. Navy Figureheads & Frou-Frou.

By contrast to the individualistic U.S. approach, the Russians already endorsed central planning and uniformity. Nearly all large Russian warships carried the double eagle at bow and stern, the symbol of the Romanov dynasty. Similar to Russian practice, the Japanese fleet bore the gilt imperial emblem, the graphically simpler 16-petal chrysanthemum or kiku mon, usually displayed right at the peak of the prow. Alternate arrangements included displaying one flower on either side of the bow (on very large ships only) and incorporating the device into a larger bit of decorative scrollwork.

The Teutonic approach (left) relied on medieval heraldry. Standard practice was to have a heraldic shield with gilt fancywork about the prow. When serious work at sea was contemplated, the ornate scrollwork was removed and replaced by an embossed shield on each bow, depicting the device of the great warrior or German state after which the ship was named. Shields on the bow were retained in simplified form through the Nazi era, in fact, while enormous Art Deco Nazi eagles ornamented the flanks of all Hitler era German capital ships. The Imperial Germans did indulge in the sort of grandiose decoration seen in early British, French and Russian ironclads: the battleship Preussen of 1902, named for Germany's leading state, Prussia, seat of the Hohenzollern dynasty, carried a huge bronze eagle at the prow; the Kaiser Friedrich III of 1896 had a portrait of the short-lived father of Wilhelm II; some of the Siegfrieds had representations of the mythological characters after whom they were named on the sterns (all shown below).

Figureheads were not limited to ships of war, however; occasionally the anachronism crept into commerce as well, usually in a chauvinistic quest for national one-upmanship. Such was the case with the 52,000-ton ocean liner Imperator, flagship of the Hamburg-Amerika Line fleet, entering service in 1913 with much fanfare as the largest ship afloat. When the next year the rival Cunard Line debuted the even longer Aquitania, Imperator went into drydock for a quick refit and emerged with several tons of gold-leafed bronze sculpture attached to the very bow of the ship -- a gung-ho Teutonic eagle with wings spread and talons clutching the globe, inscribed with the HAPAG motto Mein Felt ist die Welt, and wearing a ridiculously tiny crown on its head. This sculpture added enough feet to Imperator's over-all length that her owners could once again claim to have the world's longest liner.

The imposing figurehead did not fare so well in combat with the Atlantic wave, however. Monster waves first washed away the statue's wings, then bashed in its body on a subsequent voyage. When the ship was taken over by the Americans in 1917 for conversion to a troopship -- one of a large fleet of German liners interned in American ports at war's outbreak and turned against the Fatherland when the U.S. declared war -- the eagle was painted over with dazzle-pattern paint. She sailed as a troopship, along with an entire fleet of German liners interned in American ports, including her sister-ship Vaterland. Thus ships built in the Kaiser's yards hastened the deafeat of the Fatherland. Albert Ballin, the guiding genius of the Hamburg-Amerika Line, committed suicide as Germany crashed in ruins about him, the Kaiser fleeing to Holland in disgrace. After the War, all three of Ballin's sensational superliners were awarded to the Allies as reparations -- the Imperator, Vaterland, and the incomplete Bismarck -- to sail through the Twenties as the Cunard flagship Berengaria, the United States Lines' flagship Leviathan, and the White Star flagship Majestic, respectively. While the ex-Imperator was being recreated for peacetime service, the eagle figurehead fell victim to the welder's torch. In fact, a great portion of the German liners' extravagant original fittings reappeared in Hoboken-area pubs and hotels, where they remain to this day. This is not surprising: Hoboken was the German liners' New York terminus, where the ships were interned and captured, and where they were converted to troopships in 1917.

But to return to our main object of study, the battleship. Shortly after the turn of the 20th century -- around the time of the Dreadnought's appearance in 1906 --, these decorative pretensions vanished; the seriousness of the battleship's warlike purpose was more plainly stated as the drift toward war accelerated. The black-and-yellow paint schemes were changed to battleship grey over all and decorative flourishes on the hulls were eliminated too.

A Sampling of Turn-of-the-Century Figureheads and Frou-Frou
Click on image to see enlarged figurehead picture, text to see ship.