Sir Robert Lawrie’s Servant, Tom

Watercolour portrait of a Black boy, facing to the viewer’s right, in a blue coat with a red collar. He is described in the inscription beneath the image as ‘Sir Robert Lawrie’s Servant, Tom’, referring to Thomas Hunter, who was servant to Lieutenant (later Admiral) Sir Robert Laurie, 6th Baronet (1764–1848) in the ‘Queen’. Hunter joined the ship with Laurie at Portsmouth on 12 January 1793. He left Laurie’s service and the ship on 3 December that year, again at Portsmouth.

The sketch records Hunter’s verbal defiance in the face of violence from other crewmen. A speech bubble from his mouth is inscribed with the following text, which caricatures his accent through use of phonetic spelling: ‘Damn you Chip and you Conboy to, you Chip no sail, & you Conboy no Tack, I really tink we shall never get home’. A further inscription beneath the image explains: ‘The Boatswain’s Mate had been beating him for not getting his Hammock upon Deck, and called him the Laziest […] in the Ship, when Tom replied to him “Damn you Chip &c. &c.”’.

The sketch was made by Aiskew Paffard Hollis (1764–1844), who was as a lieutenant in the ‘Queen’. It is part of an album containing fifty-seven drawings (PAH4886–PAH4943) created by Hollis while serving in ‘Queen’ and in other ships, including ‘Pegase’ in 1785–90 and ‘Andromeda’ in 1790–93. The album includes portraits of Hollis’s shipmates, as well as scenes of everyday life ashore and afloat. This sketch is mounted on the same page as PAH4938.