Existing comment:
Colonel Rogers:
Most of the models in this gallery came to the Naval Academy in 1938 as a bequest from Colonel Henry Huddleston Rogers (1879-1935). A prominent American industrialist, he also pursued a distinguished military career as an artillery officer in the New York National Guard.
Rogers developed his passionate interest in historic ship models during the First World War. He steadily enlarged his collection in the 1920s through purchases from private families and antique dealers on both sides of the Atlantic. Chief among his possessions were his nearly fifty dockyard models, along with nine rare William and Mary display cases from c 1700. However, he also collected outstanding examples of 18th-century clipper ships, whalers, and merchantmen, plus twenty wood and bone models from the Napoleonic Era.
This gallery is a tribute to Colonel Rogers' achievement, displaying his models as he would have wished, "for the public benefit." |