#gabriel bray

[kuutamosonaatti]

Gabriel Bray, A girl in a white dress and black veil, Late 18th century

[clove-pinks]

I found some interesting biographical information about our friend Lieutenant Gabriel Bray, shown above painting his self-portrait in April 1775 with his watercolours kit, in what is probably the wardroom of HMS Pallas (NMM).

If you're not familiar with Gabriel Bray's wonderful art depicting the world of the late 18th century Royal Navy, you're in luck! His pictures are priceless primary sources.

A sailor fishing off of a gun, and two Royal Marines, both from the Pallas album.

Bray is one of the seafarers in Huw Lewis-Jones' book The Sea Journal: Seafarers' Sketchbooks, which provides more information about his life than the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich:

The son of a mariner, Gabriel Bray joined the navy at fifteen as a captain's servant. In the first six years of his sea career he served on six different ships and managed to pass his lieutenant exams in 1770, but no ships were available for a posting. His lucky break came in 1773, when assisting on the royal yacht Augusta at the fleet review in Spithead. He secretly sketched the scene and, having sat up all night to finish the painting, then managed to have it presented to King George III the following day; the king apparently liked it so much he promoted Bray on the spot.

As a keen artist, Bray made numerous watercolours on his voyages to West Africa and Jamaica when lieutenant on the frigate Pallas. His commander was Sir William Cornwallis, later the well-known admiral 'Billy Blue', a friend of Nelson and commander of the Channel Fleet during the war with France. Lacking the right family connections, Bray never advanced beyond the rank of lieutenant, so settled instead for commands of the revenue cutters Sprightly, Enterprise, Nimble, and Scourge, defending the English coast against smugglers. [...] On one notable occassion it is said he even fought off a Frenchman wielding a blunderbuss. After all this drama, he spent his final years in Dorset, a happy churchwarden.

— Huw Lewis-Jones, The Sea Journal: Seafarers' Sketchbooks

'Sketch between Decks, May 75': midshipmen in the ship's cockpit reading and studying by candlelight, as Bray himself would have lived as a middie.

[marryat92]

The hour of bed-time arrived. I was instructed how to get into my hammock, and laughed at for tumbling out on the opposite side. I was forced to submit to this pride of conscious superiority of these urchins who could only boast of a few months' more practical experience than myself, and who, therefore, called me a greenhorn.

— Frederick Marryat, The Naval Officer (Frank Mildmay)

A sailmaker and his mate ticketing hammocks aboard HMS Pallas, drawing by Lieutenant Gabriel Bray, 1774.

[clove-pinks]

Self-portrait of Lieutenant Gabriel Bray shaving, March 1775. (NMM collection)

[clove-pinks]

The principle of the divisional system was, and is, simply that each of the lieutenants should take charge of a division of the ship's company, for whose welfare and efficiency he should be particularly responsible. Under the lieutenants the midshipmen were allocated sub-divisions. [...] The midshipmen of the subdivisions were to train their men in the use of the great guns and small arms, and all divisional officers were to take pains to know their men as individuals, and attend to their welfare.

— Nicholas A. M. Rodger, The Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy

'Under the Pallas's half deck': a 1774 drawing by Gabriel Bray, second lieutenant of HMS Pallas.

[marryat92]

In some of our men-of-war it was formerly the custom to have an old knife, which was passed from one to the other, as the men joined the ship, being handed to the ugliest man they could find; he held the knife until another came, more unfortunate in physiognomy than himself, when it was immediately made over to the last, who was obliged in his turn to retain it until he could discover some one even more unprepossessing.

— Frederick Marryat, "Diary on the Continent," collected in Olla Podrida.

A Marine asleep beneath a companionway on the 'Pallas', drawing by Gabriel Bray, 1775. At left, a sailor uses a clasp knife.

[art-mirrors-art]

Gabriel Bray - Self-portrait of Lieutenant Gabriel Bray shaving (March 1775) We see Bray shaving with a rectangular mirror, but he apparently used a different mirror to make the self-portrait. He used that same mirror for another self-portrait, known as Self-portrait of Lieutenant Gabriel Bray sketching in watercolours:

Both drawings are from the album Bray kept during his expedition to West Africa with the 44-gun frigate ‘Pallas’ under Captain the Hon. William Cornwallis in 1774-76.

[thesonsofthewaves]

--- Sketch Between Decks- Gabriel Bray (May 1775)