Fife’s Victorian maritime heritage is given stamp of approval

Fife’s Victorian maritime heritage has been celebrated in a new set of Royal Mail stamps.

The stamps feature sailing boats and include a Fifie painted in Pittenweem in 1890.

The stamp set, Working Sail, which are available now from Post & Go terminals in 146 Post Office branches, feature illustrations of the sailboats Falcon, Briar, Stag, Harry, Nell Morgan and Margaret.

Henry Lawson was the artist behind Margaret.

He was a fisherman in Pittenweem, who, as a teenager, earned extra money by painting boats.

The Margaret was his father’s first boat and was used for line-fishing as well as drift-netting.

Over the centuries, the beauty of sailing ships inspired many paintings, and it is the work of folk artists who observed ships as they came into the port that has captured for posterity many types of traditional merchant and fishing vessels in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These artists would sketch from life and produce portraits of the vessel before the ship sailed again, usually within days.

The typical portrait was a broadside view of the vessel at sea or leaving harbour, with details added in the background to help identify the location.