01 Marine Painting, John Jack Robert Charles Spurling's P. & O. Steamship 'Soudan, with Footnotes #288

John Jack Robert Charles Spurling, British, 1870-1933

P. & O. Steamship 'Soudan', c. 1918

Oil on canvas on board

12 x 18 inches (30.5 x 45.8 cm)

Private collection

Soudan SS was a British Cargo Steamer of 6,677 tons built in 1931 by Barclay Curle & Company, Glasgow, for the Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company as the SOUDAN SS. She was powered by a Steam turbine with Bauer Wach exhaust system. 

Soudan struck a mine and sank off Cape Town. The mine was probably one of the many laid by the Speybank (renamed Doggerbank), a British ship captured by the German and used as a minelayer. More on Soudan SS

John (Jack) Robert Charles Spurling (1870 – 31 May 1933) was an English painter noted for nautical themes, particularly sailing ships of the 19th and 20th centuries.

John Robert Charles "Jack" Spurling was the son of an importer and grew up near the London docks, where he learned to sketch as a pastime. At the age of 16 he first went to sea as an apprentice aboard Astoria. His life nearly ended when he fell from the main upper topsail yard to the deck, he instead spent six months in a Singapore hospital. He gained his second mate's certificate after some years aboard one of Devitt & Moore's sail training vessels, and around the same time learned the art of watercolor painting, and was soon receiving commissions from other seafarers. He finished his life at sea as a sailor with the Blue Anchor line of steamers.

Spurling's second love was the stage, and promising career as an actor but success as a painter intruded: In 1921 he met Frederick Arthur Hook (died 1935), editor of The Blue Peter: The Magazine of Sea Travel, Price 1/-,[2] a magazine for sailing enthusiasts. Hook purchased much of Spurling's portfolio of work, and contracted him to supply artwork for the covers of his magazine, the first being the issue of March 1923. More on John (Jack) Robert Charles Spurling

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