The front of a ship has often been the point at which decoration or sculpture is placed. The Ancient Greeks and Phoenicians painted eyes on each side of the bow. The Vikings had carved figureheads, perhaps to ward off evil spirits. In the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries British naval ships usually had a carved figurehead that illustrated the ship's name. Merchant vessels had them too: the Cutty Sark, as I recall, has a bare-breasted Nannie, a witch, holding a horse's tail. It was this scantily-clad personage that, dressed in a "cutty sark", chased Tam O'Shanter in the poem of that name by Robert Burns.
Today, the Cutty Sark, in Greenwich, is a museum and underneath it is a fine collection of figureheads from ships of various ages.
photo © T. Boughen Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10 2014
