| Existing comment:
This is one of only a handful of the thousands of French prisoner-of-war ship models from the Napoleonic Wars that can be identified with its builders. On the underside of the display board are the signatures of two men, Louis Boyer and Jean Emeriau, and the word Porchester. This refers to the ancient castle near Portsmouth that, by 1810, housed as many as 7,000 captured French and Dutch sailors and soldiers. |