Carved figures, ornaments, and scrolls have decorated sailing ships for thousands of years. While a few of the figurehead carvers are known, the names of most of them have been lost. Very few of the figureheads themselves have survived. Many vessels, especially large ones, had finely carved figures. Others had a simple scroll or billet head. There has always been a notation on shipping registers indicating the type of figurehead on the vessel.
This is the figure head of the Ship General Williams, built at Grand River, Prince Edward Island in 1856. It is a bust of Sir William Fenwick Williams, a native of Nova Scotia and a British General during the Crimean War, who in 1856 returned to England as the "Hero of Kars". He received many honours, both in England and Nova Scotia. Three other vessels, also built in the Maritimes that year, were named after him as well as five that were built in Great Britain.
The General Williams was registered in Halifax and owned by a group of Halifax merchants. On the night of January 5 1858, while on a voyage from Saint Stephen, New Brunswick to Liverpool, England, the vessel went ashore on the rocks near the mouth of Cutler Harbour, Maine.
