01 Marine Paintings - With Footnotes, #256

Roy Cross, (British, b. 1924)

The clipper 'Reindeer' arriving at Boston Harbor, c. 2007

Oil on canvas

24 x 36 inches (61.0 x 91.4 cm)

Private collection

USS Reindeer (1863) was a steamer purchased by the Union Navy during the American Civil War.

She was used by the Union Navy as a gunboat assigned to patrol Confederate waterways. Reindeer joined the Mississippi Squadron just as Union Army and Navy efforts to open the entire Mississippi River system to Federal shipping finally reached fruition with the capture of the South's river strongholds at Vicksburg, Mississippi, and Port Hudson, Louisiana.

It was Reindeer's job to protect Northern shipping from Southern raiders. After Confederate Brig. Gen. John H. Morgan crossed the Ohio River and invaded the North with some 2,500 troops early in July, Reindeer joined a group of Union gunboats which patrolled the river for 10 days to prevent his crossing back to the southern bank and escaping. Aided by Union troops under Major General Ambrose Burnside, they chased Morgan for almost 500 miles before they caught up with him at Buffington Island on the 19th and captured about half of the invading force.

On 15 November, the gunboat was transferred to the Cumberland River for similar duty. In the months that followed, she frequently engaged Confederate batteries which fired upon her from temporary positions along the riverbanks.

She was sold at public auction on 17 August 1865 to J. A. Williamson, et al., and was redocumented as Mariner on 5 October 1865. The ship operated as a merchantman until she was stranded and destroyed at Decatur, Alabama, on 9 May 1867. More on the USS Reindeer

Roy Cross (born 23 April 1924) RSMA GAvA was a British artist and aviation journalist best known as the painter of artwork used on Airfix kits from the 1960s. Airfix is a UK manufacturer of injection-moulded plastic scale model kits of aircraft and other objects.

Born in Southwark, London and mainly self-taught, he learned his craft at the Camberwell School of Art and as a technical illustrator for training manuals for Fairey Aviation during the second world war. He progressed from there to producing advertising art for the aircraft industry and other companies. He illustrated for The Aeroplane and the Eagle comic.

In 1952 he joined the Society of Aviation Artists. He started in 1964 with box art for Airfix's Do 217 and his last work for them was the box art for the German heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen (1974). He went into marine paintings. More on Roy Cross

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