This card gave us the third location of the current Royal Armouries - using "The Victory", Nelson`s flagship, permanently moored in Portsmouth Harbour - and Nelson as another, for the Royal Armoury is at Fort Nelson, in Fareham, just nine miles away from the harbour.
Now Fort Nelson was actually a proper military fort, one of several which were constructed to guard Portsmouth Harbour from the French in the 1860s. After the Second World War it was abandoned, and slowly decayed until the mid 1970s when it was sold to the council. They restored it, along with local historians and volunteers, and opened it to the public in 1994. It was then converted to the Royal Armouries, Portsmouth, which opened in 1995.
Now if you just look in a catalogue, you will see that there are two versions of this set, first described in our original John Player reference book, (RB.17, published in 1950), as :
176. SHIPS` FIGUREHEADS. Small cards. Fronts in colour. Backs in blue, with descriptive text. Home issue, October 1912.
A. Numerals, with serif - see Fig. 13.A
B. Numerals, "sans serif" - see Fig. 13.B177. SHIPS` FIGUREHEADS. Large cards. Fronts in colour. Backs in grey, with descriptive text. Home issue, December 1931
What this fails to impart, however, is they are entirely different - the small, or standard sized set being coloured drawings of just the figurehead, and our large set which shows the actual ship. In fact the figurehead shown for HMS Victory on card 17 of the standard sized set is entirely different. The reverse of that card tells the tale, saying that "Nelson`s famous flagship had four different figureheads at various periods of her career. That illustrated is believed to be the one carried at the Battle of Trafalgar. The figure-head represents a shield surmounted by a crown, and supported by a marine on the port side and a sailor on the starboard. At the present time the Victory still carries the shield and crown, but the supporters are two cherubs"
By the time of our original World Tobacco Issue Index, the two have been split up, the small sized cards being in section 2.A, of the John Player listing, for issues between 1903 and 1917. They appear as :
SHIPS` FIGUREHEADS. Sm. Nd. (25) ... P72-50
A. Numerals sans serif
B. Numerals with serif
And yes, this is a reverse of the order in the original John Player booklet.
Our set is removed to section 2.B, for issues between 1922 and 1939. and it reads :
SHIPS` FIGUREHEADS. Lg. Nd. (25) ... P72-134.
It still does not mention that they are not versions of each other though. And this information is not even included in our updated World Tobacco Issues Index, where they remain in the same sections and also with the same text :
SHIPS` FIGUREHEADS. Sm. Nd. (25) ... P644-110
A. Numerals sans serif B. Numerals with serif
Still a reverse of the order in the original John Player booklet.
And our set appears as :
SHIPS` FIGUREHEADS. Lg. Nd. (25) ... P644-276