A couple of years ago I found online a wonderful old cartoon from perhaps 1810 or so. It depicted an English princess visiting a ship of the Royal Navy. IIRC, she had declined the bosun’s chair and was going up the side of the ship using the handholds. The word balloon was something like “I’ll go aboard like our jolly tars - watch my petticoats, captain!”, while the ship’s captain and other officers were disconcerted on how to handle the situation. The caption was, I think, “The princess she is a lively one”.
I’d like to order a print of it to frame, my husband and I being big fans of the Patrick O’Brian series with Aubrey and Maturin. I’ve been Googling for it all morning with no luck at all.
Can anyone help me track this down? It might have been a Gillray cartoon, but it was a bit too genteel for that artist perhaps. I think I saw it as part of a museum’s online collection, but it was awhile ago and I may be misremembering.
I found it! It’s in the New York Public Library’s site for images online. By the way, that site is a killer of a place to get lost in for days at a time. Here’s the link:
For all of us P.O.B. addicts, Lust4Life. Looking at the drawing, you see why Stephen Maturin had such trouble getting from one ship to the other. He would scorn the bishop’s chair, too!
I was misremembering some of the phrasing, which is probably why my earlier searches turned up nothing.