“HMS Chrysanthemum” by A. Taylor
an English mid-century watercolour, signed, framed behind non-reflective glass,
depicting the Anchusa class moored alongside,
£335
Commissioned in 1917 as a minesweeper, and intentionally designed to look like a merchant ship in order to dupe those viewing her from a periscope, HMS Chrysanthemum had a colourful career in the First War, off Turkey working on the exchange of prisoners of war and the Spanish Civil War. In 1938 she was permanently moored on the Thames Embankment and used as a drill ship until finally being decommissioned in 1988 and sold to a charity. Steven Speilberg used her as a location for an Indiana Jones film before she was laid up in The Medway. The brackish water there took its toll on the hull and she was scrapped in 1995.