A portrait showing the schooner ‘Robert Ingle Carter’ in broadside view. She is under full sail in a lively sea and waves can be seen breaking over her deck. She was launched from J.M. Brooks’s yard at East Boston Mass in 1891. Her managing owner was Gardiner B. Reynolds and her first Master Miron B. Peak of the Cape Cod town of Barnstaple, Massachusetts. Reynolds was the chief coal merchant in Newport, Rhode Island where the vessel was registered and a pillar of the local Presbyterian church. He had a substantial fleet of eight three and five four-master ships known as the Reynolds Line, all built between 1886 and 1891.

Altogether the ‘Robert Ingle Carter’ had 41 owners, about half of whom came from Newport or nearby Middletown Rhode Island. Most were fairly prosperous merchants, while the master, builders, and family of the State Governor of New Hampshire, on whose lands the timber for the vessels’ frames was cut, were among the owners. The ‘Robert Ingle Carter’ was employed in the long range coastal trade sailing for example from the Kennebec River in Maine laden with ice on the 8 August 1891 and arriving at Alexandria, Virginia on 18 August. In the next few months she carried ice cargoes from Maine to Washington, Philadelphia and Baltimore. There is little doubt but that she returned to New England with coal cargoes loaded in Virginia and Maryland. She was lost when carrying coal cargo from Perth Amboy. New Jeresey to Portland, Maine. She went ashore at daylight on 26 December 1896 off Cape Elizabeth, Maine. The crew were taken off but the vessel was so badly damaged that she was sold at auction for $1,300 and converted into a coal barge.

The artist was born in February 1873 in Boston and lived and worked in Charlestown, Massachusetts. As a painter he was often seen sailing round Boston harbour in a small boat, taking measurements of vessels for his work. In addition to traditional oil paintings he also produced ship portraits with embroidery and silk painted backgrounds. Badger continued to work until his death from tuberculosis in 1919 at the age of 46.

The painting is signed ‘S. F.M.Badger, 1893’ and is inscribed ‘S.C.H.R. R.I.Carter M.R.Pear Master’.