In this centenary year of the beginning of the Great War (1914—18), we are reminded of the name of the warship HMS Aboukir, for it was on the demise of that vessel that William Edmund Smith was the first Bermudian to be lost in that conflict.

Ultimately, some eighty Bermudians were killed in service overseas during what would later be named the First World War.

Launched in 1900, HMS Aboukir was the last ship to be so named in the Royal Navy and a German torpedo from the submarine U-9 sent her to the bottom on 22 September 1914, with the loss of 527 men.

The third HMS Aboukir had a connection with Bermuda during the earlier conflict of the American Civil War (1861—65), for it was on that warship that Naval Cadet Arthur Savage first visited the Island, early in 1862, twenty-nine years after his father appeared with the Royal Artillery at St George’s.

Johnson Savage MD was a surgeon with that Corps of the British Army and spent three years at Bermuda, 1833—36, during which time he painted a remarkable series of watercolours, which his great great grandchildren recently donated to the National Museum at the old Royal Naval Dockyard.

As it transpires, Savage the son also painted at Bermuda and his work is contained in the logbook he was required to keep as a Naval Cadet, later Midshipman, a document that has been scanned for the record at the National Museum, through the kindness of his great grand nephew, Peter Savage.

Sadly, Midshipman Savage lived only into his twentieth year, dying in England on 7 September 1866 of an illness of the lungs.

His father, the doctor and artist, made a watercolour of his grave, which bore the inscription, “Sacred to the loved memory of Arthur Savage Midshipman Royal Navy second son of Johnson Savage MD Dep Ins Gen of Hospitals”: the grave has yet to be located, although a castle appears in the background of the painting, which might eventually help to find it.

Arthur Savage served on five Royal Navy ships during the period of his connection with Bermuda, as follows: HMS Aboukir (29 December 1861—25 August 1862), in which he sailed to Bermuda via Teneriffe and later from the Island to Halifax, Nova Scotia and thence to Port Royal, Jamaica.

On 27 August 1862, he shipped out of Port Royal for Spithead on HMS Agamemnon (91 guns, noted for laying part of the first transatlantic telegraph cable in 1858) arriving at Portsmouth on 7 October 1862, where he was quartered for nine days on the Belvidera, hulk.

From 18 October to 4 December 1862, he was aboard HMS Victory (the great Admiral Nelson’s flagship at Trafalgar) at Portsmouth.

The last ship associated with Midshipman Savage and Bermuda was HMS Pylades, a 21 gun screw corvette, on which he departed Spithead for Bermuda in December 1862.

Thereafter he was with the ship on a Gulf of Mexico patrol, during which voyage he was at Port Royal, Mobile (Alabama), Vera Cruz (Mexico) and the Rio Grande.

At Mobile, Arthur painted an image of a “Federal States” ship, which was taking part in the blockage of that town and its expansive bay.

The British ship was only on observation duty, as Admiral Milne at Bermuda strived to keep Britain out of the conflict between the Union and Confederate sectors of the United States in its civil war.

The captain of HMS Pylades during part of Savage’s time on the vessel was another Arthur (later Admiral AWA Hood, 1st Baron Hood of Avalon), who was given command of the vessel on the North America and West Indies Station in December 1862, in appreciation of his earlier naval service in China.

Arthur Savage’s Bermuda paintings are four in number, one of which is a hand-drawn chart of the Island.

One is entitled Mouth of the Narrows and illustrates that passage off St Catherine’s Point, which controlled the access to the Narrows and the dockyard beyond, the Narrows being the only ships’ channel through the Bermuda reefs.

High on the hill above Fort St Catherine stands the ‘citadel’ of the defences of St George’s Island, Fort Victoria, sadly now largely degraded when the site was used for a hotel in the 1960s.

Another is a panorama of the Royal Naval Dockyard at Ireland Island, in which several convict hulks are yet in evidence, although 1862 would be the final year of their use as such prisoner hostels.

A last painting is signed A Savage Midn March 1863 and appears to be an illustration of his ship, HMS Pylades, along side the Coal Wharf at Dockyard, with the Commissioner’s House in the background.

Indicative of the coming Age of Steam, the warship was powered by sail and steam and therefore would have to refuel with coal during its visits to the Bermuda Dockyard at the quay where later thousands of units of compressed coal were stored for such end.

Arthur Savage’s artistic abilities were cut short by his early death, but one presumes that his father, Johnson Savage MD, may have given the lad some painting instructions as a child and young adult.

His paintings, while showing promise, did not have the opportunity to achieve the brilliance of those of his father, but given time, who is to say that Bermuda might have been graced with another Savage collection of watercolours of the first order, reflecting the later decades of the nineteenth century?

Edward Cecil Harris, MBE, JP, PHD, FSA is Director of the National Museum. Comments may be made to director@nmb.bm or 704-5480.