Scale: not calculated. An early 19th-century model of a pontoon whose purpose has never been determined, though since it formerly in the Museum of Artillery at the Rotunda in Woolwich, London, one can surmise that it would have been used for transporting military provisions, men, or even horses. The Rotunda Museum’s catalogue from 1906 describes it as an ‘Ancient Austrian tin pontoon’.

Its construction is very interesting, and modern, with its doubled-skinned hull strengthened with metal frames. In construction and appearance it is not unlike the dumb barges seen on British rivers up and down the country over the last hundred years. Two sections of the pontoon’s framing are exposed, along the inboard port bow and the inboard starboard stern quarter. The space between the two skins would have given the pontoon additional buoyancy and stability. While the outer hull is vertical, the inner one tapers inwards. There are ten securing rings around the top part of the hull.

It is one of several models of pontoons the NMM acquired from the Rotunda in 1957 (see the model of a French pontoon, SLR2707).