The Emigrant clipper Torrens - Commissioned oil on canvas by Geoff Hunt RSMA.

Geoff Hunt writes:   "A very celebrated ship owing to her connection with Joseph Conrad, who served as her First Officer from November 1891 to June 1893, before his literary career began. She was by all accounts a fast, weatherly, comfortable, and much-loved vessel.

 

As far as my research was concerned, I found few readily available photographs of the Torrens - two or three - but I did obtain a very good set of plans drawn by Harold A. Underhill in consultation with Captain Angel, for many years the Torrens commander. By pure chance, I also happened to find the original builders' model of the ship, a particularly fine model that currently graces the main saloon of HQS Wellington, the headquarters ship of the Honourable Company of Master Mariners ( I and other members of the Royal Society of Marine Artists had been invited to sketch and paint from the upper deck of the Wellington in late March 2013, a day which turned out to be freezing weather, snow flurries in a sharp east wind, and we were more than glad to seek the warmth of the saloon!"