Jack, hove down- with a grog blossom fever.

William Elmes

Jack, hove down- with a grog blossom fever.

Lond, Thomas Tegg, 12^th. August 1811

Etching

Original hand colouring

245 x 350 mm

£250

A sailor with a hideously carbuncled face lies in a hammock wearing a striped shirt and night-cap. Beside him is his sea-chest, the open lid inscribed ‘Sea Stock’, from which he has taken a bottle of ‘Grogg’. He shakes his fist at an old-fashioned doctor, lean and grotesque (left), who stoops towards him proferring a box of ‘Pills’ and holding a long bottle labelled ‘A Sweat’. Under the doctor’s arm is a gold-headed cane, and from his coat-pocket project a ‘Clyster’ [pipe] which is exploding, and a bottle of ‘Jollop’; beside him are a ‘Pestel’ and ‘Mortar’. He says: “hold—I must stop Your Grog Jack—it excites those impulces, and concussions of the Thorax, which acorn pany Sternutation by which means you are in a sort of a kind of a Situation-— that Your head must be—shaved—I shall take from you only—20os of Blood— then swallow this Draught and Box of Pills, and I shall administer to you a Clyster.” Jack answers angrily: “Stop my Grog.—Belay there Doctor—Shiver my timbers but your lingo bothers me—You May batter my Hull as long as you like, but I’ll be d—’nd if ever You board me with your Glyster pipe.” In his chest are bottles inscribed ‘Brandy’, ‘Rum’, and ‘Gin’, a large twist of ‘Pig tail’ [tobacco], a ‘True Love Token’, and a miniature (cf. No. 10894). He is covered with a gaily patterned coverlet inscribed ‘P R’. His jacket and breeches are on the deck beside him, and close by (left) are a cannon and cannon-balls.