2-995-908 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The "Swan" of the Exe, 1860. '...an elegant yacht, the very similitude of a gigantic white swan...constructed from drawings and sections by the owner, Captain George Peacock...[It is] exactly four times the size of Bewick's Mute Swan...Its neck and head, beautifully carved, rise gracefully 16 feet above the water-line. The wings of the bird are represented by the sails, which are hoisted and lowered by halyards running through gilt pendent blocks attached to a gilded ring at the upper part of the neck...the necessity for ballasting is dispensed with, and all possibility of capsizing or sinking is removed, rendering the vessel, in fact, a perfect life-boat...a propelling force is given by means of two powerful steel-webbed and feathering feet...A lever, with handles worked by two or four persons in the same manner as a fire-engine...gives a reciprocating motion to the legs...Captain Peacock calculates that in smooth water a minimum speed of five miles an hour may be obtained... In the table are small oval apertures, which open to the water underneath, and thus afford the opportunity of fishing whilst sitting at table... smoke...is conveyed through the bird's neck and out at its nostrils...The breast of the bird is...fitted up as a boudoir'. From "Illustrated London News", 1860.