Gabriel Bray (British, 1746-1823) The King of Barra arrives to embark in a boat sent from the Pallas off Juffureh, Gambia River, 10 February 1775; The King of Barra welcomed by Captain Cornwallis on board the Pallas off Juffureh, Gambia River, 10 February 1775, a pair watercolour each 34 x 49.5cm (13 3/8 x 19 1/2in). (2) Footnotes: Provenance The artist's sister Margaret (Mrs John Cole), thence by descent to the current owner. Private collection, UK. Lieutenant Gabriel Bray RN was a talented amateur artist, whose surviving work provides an unusually vivid record of life in the 18th-century Royal Navy. Naval and military officers were trained and encouraged to draw for professional purposes, but for Bray it appears to have become a lifelong pastime. Although comparatively little of his work survives, the largest group - 73 watercolour sketches - are in the National Maritime Museum (NMM) in Greenwich.1 Acquired in 1991, bound up in a later album, about 40 of these studies relate to the first of two voyages Bray made in HMS Pallas between 1774 and 1776 to the Guinea Coast of West Africa and the Caribbean: 13 of the 40 are of African views or people. Pallas was a 36-gun frigate launched in 1757 and commanded on both these voyages by Captain the Hon. William Cornwallis (1744-1819), who later became a well-known admiral in the French Wars of 1793-1815. In the Pallas he had just two lieutenants: Alexander Agnew as first lieutenant and Bray as second.2 The present drawings are rare examples of fully composed subjects by Bray and may be unique in terms of subject. They too record an occasion during his first Pallas voyage, for which Cornwallis was ordered 'to proceed to the Coast of Africa...[and]...stop at all British forts, Settlements and Places of trade...as well to Leeward as to Windward of Cape Coast [Castle, 80 miles west of modern Accra, Ghana] and to give such protection to His Majesty's trading subjects in those parts as they may respectively stand in need of and particularly to take, destroy or drive away any Pirates who may infest the same...'. That commerce, of course, then included a varied European traffic in African captives, either seized or traded for with the help of dominant local clans for shipment as slave-labour to the Caribbean and Americas. Cornwallis, however, was strictly ordered not to engage in any form of trade on the coast and especially not the transport of 'Negroes to Barbados for public sale to the dishonour of His Majesty's Service', as some Royal Navy captains had been known to do. Pallas sailed from England on 18 December 1774, in company with the 16-gun sloop Weasel (or Weazle), first calling at Madeira and Tenerife.3 Their first African anchorage was off the dangerous bar of the Senegal River on 26 January 1775, where Cornwallis supplied the British Senegal Fort with 25 half-barrels of gunpowder.4 When the two ships then again set sail on 31 January, Cornwallis followed his original orders to dispatch Weasel temporarily to the Cape Verde Islands on piracy reconnaissance. Next stop for Pallas was the British island base of Fort James (or 'James Island') about 20 miles up the wide estuary of the Gambia River and just under two miles off its northern shore. Arriving there on 4 February, Cornwallis landed (with an 11-gun salute from the fort) to liaise with its Governor and also trans-shipped 15 half-barrels of powder into a local schooner for its replenishment. After the Governor's return visit on 6 February, Pallas shifted its mooring on the 7th to the north side of the river, closer to 'The French Factory (Albreda)' and anchored three-quarters of a mile off 'The Watering Place' at 'Gillifree', as these are all noted in Cornwallis's log in the National Archives (ADM 51/667).5 The crew spent the next two days in fair weather taking on firewood and water from shore and re-setting rigging for sea. On Thursday 9 February Cornwallis's log notes 'D[itt]o Weather. Employed as before. AM [on the 10th, since ship's time runs noon to noon] Saluted the King of Barra on his coming on board with eleven Guns, and with the same number on his going on shore.' The King's arrival is what the two drawings show: the first, on horseback to embark in one of Pallas's boats; the other his formal welcome on board by Cornwallis. The Kingdom of Barra (or Barrah) was a European name from the late 15th to late 19th centuries for the Kingdom of Niumi (now the Upper and Lower Niumi districts of the Gambia), stretching some 40 miles inland from the Atlantic along the north side of the river estuary, including Juffureh. During that time, it was controlled by three principal Mandinka clans who rotated the monarchy and the king shown by Bray - with a white beard and of advanced age - appears to be Nandanku Suntu (reigned 1760 - c.1776), a chief of the Sonko clan and whose capital town was Essau Jelenkunda. Of the Barra/Niumi kings whose dates are known from 1686 to 1911, his roughly 16-year reign was the longest before 1800 and only later surpassed by two others. Bray's drawings ably convey the care and respect of his entourage for their elderly ruler and that he was one of great status. He arrives on a fine white horse, most likely of European or Arab stock, in an elaborate one-piece dress of probably also European derivation (not least his tricorn-brimmed hat) and is escorted by a large armed and uniformed bodyguard, a statuesque drummer/herald and accompanying female courtiers, as the second drawing shows. From the British viewpoint, in addition to the gun salutes on arrival and departure, his importance is also evidenced by the formality of his reception, with Pallas's officers in full uniform irrespective of the tropical climate. Bray never advanced beyond lieutenant, probably through lack of adequate 'interest' (patronage). After the Pallas voyages, he only commanded small vessels off the English coast, including the cutters Sprightly (1779), Nimble (1780-82 and up to 1787), Scourge (1784), Enterprise (1788) and Hind (1799-1800). Scourge, Enterprise and Hind were part of the Customs service, in which he saw some sharp action supressing smuggling, off Deal (his birthplace) in the first and between Portland and Land's End in the last. He married in London in 1780 but had no children and retired from the Navy in 1800. That was initially to Charmouth, Dorset, in poor health, and after some later time in London he returned to Charmouth where he became one of the churchwardens by 1816. He died on 6 December 1823 and was buried there a week later. The present two drawings passed to his sister Margaret (Mrs John Cole) and thence by descent to the current owner. The NMM first heard of them in 1978 and they are briefly mentioned by Roger Quarm in his article 'An Album of Drawings by Gabriel Bray RN: HMS Pallas, 1774-75' in The Mariner's Mirror Vol. 81, No.1 (February 1995) pp. 32 - 44. Colour images have only been seen much more recently. The King of Barra arrives to embark in a boat sent from the Pallas off Juffureh, Gambia River, 10 February 1775 The African attendant in blue on the Palomino horse (a colouration of Spanish origin) and gesturing with his hat, may be acting as an interpreter, explaining how the King is to visit the Pallas, shown behind. The ship is flying the swallow-tail red pennant of a Commodore at the mai For further information about this lot please visit the lot listing