This ship is H.M.S. Royal Sovereign, the third ship by that name - and she would be succeeded by four more. She was a hundred gun, first rate, ship of the line belonging to the Royal Navy, launched out of Plymouth Dockyard on the 11th of September 1786. However she had been a long time building, as her order went in on the 3rd of February 1772 - so long that by the time she was launched she had been handled by three master shipwrights.
She first saw action at the first Battle of Ushant, in 1794, with the loss of fourteen men and the wounding of a further forty-one. Then she was sent to the French Revolutionary War, as the flagship of Vice-Admiral Cornwallis. A year later, she was in the news again, for she collided with a transport ship called the Bellisarius, which sank almost immediately.
Little is heard of her from then on, until 1805, when she becomes the flagship of Admiral Collilngwood at the Battle of Trafalgar. That meant that she led one column of ships into war, whilst Nelson, on the Victory, led the other. After a frantic, pitched battle, she had lost over a hundred and twenty of her men, and received several wounds to her body, her masts and rigging also being torn to pieces. In fact she could not continue to signal, nor even power herself and had to be towed home. Collingwood had to abandon ship and take over another vessel.
Despite this she was mended, and sent to patrol the Mediterranean, less than a year later. She served in France, and then along the English Channel, but then she was retired, back to Plymouth, where she was renamed to H.M.S. Captain, and finally broken up in 1841, though four of her guns were saved and incorporated in the Collingwood Monument, on Tyneside, where the bulk of her crews seem to have originated.
This set is first recorded in our original reference book RB.3 - "The Cigarette Card Issues of W.D. & H.O. Wills" - published in 1942. Even at that early date, enough was known about the set for the information to spread over several pages, and to cover four different versions thereof, so the entry starts with the following paragraphs, which aimed to enable the collector to sort out those versions :
SHIPS.
- A. Set One. 25 subjects only. FRONTS printed in full colour with titles in small letters. No framelines and without "Wills` Cigarettes" across card. BACKS printed in black with type letters only as follows "Wills` "Three Castles Cigarettes "There is no sweeter tobacco comes from Virginia" and no better brand than the "THREE CASTLES" - Thackeray - "The Virginians" - manufactured only by W.D. & H.O. WILLS, Limited.
- B. Set Two. 25 subjects only. FRONTS identical to Set One. BACKS printed in GREY with Star and Circle ornamental design. The card used for this set is quite different from Set Four, where the subjects are repeated. It can be described as white and glazed, and is heavier.
- C. Set Three. 50 subjects only. Entirely different studies from Sets One and Two. (Mr. Thornton Willis calls this set "Ships, Yachts and Strange Craft"). Fronts printed in full colour with titles in slightly larger letters than sets one and two. No framelines but with "Wills` Cigarettes" across card. Backs DARK GREY. When compared with Set Two these backs may be called "blue-ish grey" and Set Two "blackish-grey". The card is white, glazed, and heavier when compared with Set Four, where the subjects are repeated. Star and Circle ornamental design.
- D. Set Four. 100 subjects. Repeating the 25 studies from Set One, the 50 studies from Set Two, and 25 new studies added. Fronts FRONTS in full colour without frame lines. ALL CARDS IN THIS SERIES HAVE "WILLS`S CIGARETTES" ACROSS THE FRONTS. This means "Wills` Cigarettes" was added to the original studies for this issue. BACKS Star and Circle ornamental design. The printing has a greenish appearance, although the ink is probably blue. This is caused by a tinted card which has a faded appearance. On some cards this is very pronounced, on others it shows "buff", but in any case it cannot be confused with white.
(As there are many "mixed" sets in existence, this table should be studied closely before classification is attempted. Set Four is definitely on thinner board than any of the other sets.)
There then follows a list of the hundred cards and in which sets they appear - this will be scanned in asap.
Now before we get any further along, we must say that our use of the original code W/11 [RB.3/11] is actually partially incorrect, for in RB.3 none of the sets were given identifying numbers, they were simply listed in more or less alphabetical order, for the advertisement cards are listed first and then "Actresses" (1893), and, for some reason "Double Meaning" precedes "Coronation Series" - and these errors remained in place through the early Wills reference books, though with the addition of the codes they could easily have moved them into alphabetical order. Anyway, I digress. The code of W/11 only came in when the corrections and additions to those sets were printed at the front of RB.11 – The Cigarette Card Issues of W.D. & H.O. Wills Part I (revised) and Part II - published in 1948. In there, it says:
11. SHIPS - see pages 24-27.
The records of Wills mention the issue of these cards as follows:
- Ships (set of 25) Issue commenced 1895
- New Ships-Yachts, etc (50 designs) " " " " Aug.1896
The card listed as No.83 on page 26 bears the caption "H.M.S. Formidable. Launched 1898.
The four series can thus be summarised as follows :
- A. Series of 25. "Three Castles" backs. Issued 1895
- B. Series of 25. Grey backs. Issued 1895 ?
- C. Series of 50. Dark grey backs Issued 1896
- D. Series of 100. Greenish backs Issued 1898-9
As Series D is omitted in the record of Wills` issues referred to in the introduction to this volume, the series may prove to be an export issue; cards with the greenish back are often found in collections abroad, especially those made in India and the Far East.
25 cards of Series C are known without the red flags or pennons, i.e. red colour printing omitted.
Several printers` errors, in the list on pages 25-27, requite correction : -
- Card No. 1. H.M.S. Alexandra (not Alexandria)
- 39. R.M.S. Dunottar Castle (not Dunotta)
- 56. S.S. Tantallon Castle (not Tantallion)
- 88. Japanese Cruiser Idzumi (not Tozumi)
- 90. H.M.S. Immortalite (not Immortalitie)
- 91. Japanese Battleship Jakasago (not Cruiser)
- 92. Siamese Cruiser Maha Chakr Kri (not Chakri)
- 100. Japanese Cruiser Yoshino (not Joshino)
other small differences occur as between our listing and card titles, i.e.
- No. 18 First Class Torpedo Boat (not 1st Class), etc. etc.
Looking at the list I think that the Far East may well have been the area of issue, for out of the last twenty five cards five are Japanese and one Siamese. And it is not inconceivable that the set was designed to reinforce the power of the British Navy, at around the time that they were occupying of Weihaiwei (this began in July 1898) which was the main naval port in Northern China, and home to their best ships.
By the time of our original World Tobacco Issues Index, most of this information was not repeated, though both the original booklets were long out of print and only being made available, without covers, in a very limited way. Despite this, the entry reads :
SHIPS. (A). Sm. Unnd. See W/11 ... W62-45
- A. "Three Castles" back. (25)
- B. Scroll back in grey. Without "Wills`s Cigarettes" on front (25)
- C. Scroll back in blue-grey. With "Wills`s Cigarettes" on front (50)
- D. Scroll back, grey on brown board. (100)
This text remains the same in our updated version of the World Tobacco Issues Index, apart from a new code, of W675-064