A half-length gilt figurehead of Sunbeam [Constance Alberta Brassey] from the team yacht Sunbeam.

A half-length gold-painted figurehead of a female angel, or winged cherub, with her hands crossed over her chest representing Constance Alberta Brassey (1868-1873), the four-year-old daughter of the Liberal politician Thomas Brassey and his wife, Annie. Constance, nicknamed ‘Sunbeam’, died of scarlet fever the year before the launch of the three-masted steam yacht they named after her in 1874. For eleven months in 1876–77, the Sunbeam and the Brassey family embarked on a circumnavigation of the globe, the first undertaken for pleasure. The crew of 43 included the four surviving children: Thomas (aged 14), Mabelle (aged 11), Muriel (aged 4) and Marie (aged 2). Annie (later Lady) Brassey wrote a popular account of their adventures in 1878 but never mentioned the significance of the name or the figurehead.

The figurehead of Constance preserves her likeness in the carving and her memory in the yacht’s name. A photograph taken in 1873 at Niagara Falls of her older sister, Mabelle, shows similarities in the shape of the face, suggesting that she may have been the model for the figurehead.

In contrast to the elaborate figurehead, Constance’s headstone at St Laurence, Catsfield, East Sussex is very simple. It records her name and dates of birth and death. Below this is the phrase ‘Thy will not ours be done’, a deliberate misquote from Luke 22:42 of Jesus’ plea to God before Judas betrayed him. Ultimately, the survival of the figurehead at the Museum has provided Constance with a degree of perpetual commemoration that goes beyond the original intention of Annie and Thomas Brassey.