The figurehead is from a Spanish two-decker, reputed to have fought at Trafalgar and escaped.
In 1869 the ship was being employed as a hulk for political prisoners at Fernando Po. In October of that year, while HMS 'Sirius' was stationed at Fernando Po, four young officers, Sub-Lts Gardiner and Henry Backler, Midshipman A.F.H. Drayton and Assistant Surgeon James C. Dunlop, decided to remove the figurehead. At night, and in a gale, the four went out in a dinghy, two armed with a two-handed saw, climbed the cable and worked while two remained in the dinghy. Eventually the head dropped into the sea and was towed to the Sirius, which sailed within a few hours for the Cape. The head was kept in the gun room until the end of the commission when it was removed to Midshipman Drayton's home in Southhampton.
Gardiner was drowned in the China sea and Dunlop and Backler had died, so the figurehead remained in Drayton's possession until he died in his 95th year in February 1945.