Curio

State Library of New South Wales
French warship 'Atalante', Fitzroy Dock, Sydney, 1873

French warship 'Atalante', Fitzroy Dock, Sydney, 1873

1873
Glass photonegative

Merlin was pleased with this photograph of the French ironclad Atalante in Fitzroy Dock. In the Town and Country Journal, 23 August 1873, he wrote:

Probably there is no one more difficult to please in procuring a picture of this kind than the landscape photographer himself. I may therefore be permitted to say in behalf of the one referred to, that it gave me satisfaction.

With a crew of 316, Atalante had an impressive armament, including six massive 194 mm breech-loading guns, four in a central battery below deck and two in barbettes on the upper deck. These could hurl a 75 kg shell over seven kilometres. At the bottom of the photograph is the solid brass ramming bow, weighing 20 tonnes.

Atalante in Fitzroy Dock, 1873 by Margaret Bradstock

Flagship of the French Pacific Squadron

a wooden-hulled ironclad corvette

with solid brass ramming bow

and six breech-loading guns,

Atalante's here from the Franco-Prussian War,

docked for repairs.

Men are out on the bowsprit

balanced like web-spinning spiders

in the rigging, down painting the hull,

some carrying heavy lengths of rope

precariously, across the narrow gangplank,

adjusting their sea-legs to land.

Balmain's in the background, a green landscape.

Cockatoo Island's hewn-out sandstone shelf,

propping the ship, faces Fitzroy Dock

built with convict labour − its bollards still in place

− by men who forged their own imprisoning bars

not seeing any life beyond this precinct.

Merlin, behind the camera, declared himself

pleased with the detail he'd captured.

-  after French warship Atalante, Fitzroy Dock, Sydney, 1873 - a2825357.