<-- Previous  |  Image Index  |  Next -->

14. Selected image: artifact. Source: Ship's Figurehead of Pocahontas. c. 1820. (William M. S. Rasmussen and Robert S. Tilton, Pocahontas: Her Life and Legend. Richmond: Virginia Historical Society, 1994. 41.) Rasmussen and Tilton say that the carving they show "once adorned a merchant ship owned by the wealthy Philadelphian Stephen Girard. . . . Indeed, it is one of the more spectacular of early nineteenth-century American ship carvings to survive." Since Pocahontas took a long sea voyage from which she did not return, it was a natural romantic notion to name ships or carve figureheads after her.
[artifact; illustrated]