Note 56 — 1783.

This was on the 22nd May, 1802. The account given at the time of this disgraceful act is as follows:—“A dreadful fire broke out at Woolwich, and from the investigation which has taken place into this calamitous circumstance, there is but too much reason to believe that this disaster was not the mere effect of accident. The fire broke out, at one and the same time, in three different places, besides which a great mass of combustible materials have been discovered. The loss to Government will be immense. The damage done to the Model-room is particularly to be lamented, as several choice works of art have been destroyed, without the power of reparation; however, the injury done to the beautiful model of the rock of Gibraltar is not so great as was at first represented, it having sustained but a slight damage, which can be easily repaired, and the whole restored to its original state.”—Dodsley’s Annual Register, 1802, p. 404. The journalist is wrong in his remarks concerning the state of the model after the fire. It was completely destroyed, and not even the fragments are now in existence. Some persons, indeed, with whom I have conversed, bear out the chronicler in his record, and affirm that the model was repaired, and is now in the Rotunda; but they have given me a fair inference of the mistaken character of their recollections, by uniformly referring to the model of the north front, executed by Richmond and Marques, which, at the very time that the fire occurred, formed one of the curiosities of Buckingham Palace. Drinkwater (p. 108, Murray’s edit.) attests the fact of its destruction; and in this he is borne out by the ‘Repository Detail of Arms,’ &c., printed in 1822. In that catalogue (at p. 9-21) is a list of the arms, models, &c., of the original institution preserved from the fire of 1802, and collected by Sir William Congreve, but no mention is made of the model in question. This, then, is the best attainable evidence of the certainty of its demolition, coupled with the acknowledgment, at page 52 of the same catalogue, that the “North end of Gibraltar,” the model mistaken for the one destroyed in the Arsenal, was presented to the Repository by George IV. Had the large model of the Rock been preserved, Sir William Congreve would most certainly have noted it in the detail.