The strength of a public petition is in the names of the people signing it and the numbers of those who do. But presentation matters, too, and Boston artist Eric Pape knew it.
In organizing a Congressional petition to save USS Constitution from disrepair in 1905, Pape collected 30,000 names of Massachusetts residents in less than a month. All of them signed a massive scroll, topped with calligraphied petition language and Pape’s original artwork depicting the ship, and rolled onto a 41-inch-wide drum. When it was complete, the impressive spectacle rolled out to 170 feet in length, and attracted extensive press attention – something the astute Pape certainly relished. Congress was suitably impressed, appropriating funds that summer to begin the much-needed overhaul of the ship.
Thanks to a generous donation, the museum acquired a photographic portrait of Pape taken in February 1906, on the heels of his successful campaign. Pape was still in Washington when the photo taken, his mammoth petition having just taken up residence on display outside the Secretary of the Navy’s office in Washington, D.C. It was an ironic location for the display given the events that led up to Pape’s petition.
In December 1905, USS Constitution was in such poor shape that the Secretary of the Navy, Charles Bonaparte, publicly proposed towing it out to sea to use as target practice for the modern Navy’s guns. News of the proposal led Boston businessman Moses Gulesian to offer to buy the ship for $10,000, which the Navy promptly replied it was not allowed to accept.
Headlines of Bonaparte’s proposal and Gulesian’s offer sparked a humiliating public rebuke for the Navy and an outcry from the public that something needed to be done to save the ship.
The headlines also stirred Pape to action. Within days of hearing of Gulesian’s and Bonaparte’s exchange, Pape turned his artistic skills and political connections to beginning a Congressional petition to fund the ship’s restoration.
An Established Art Star
By the beginning of 1906, Eric Pape was renowned as both a fine artist and commercial artist. His work ranged from dramatic full-scale portraits of gilded age elites to magazine illustrations and theater promotions.
Born in San Francisco in 1870, Pape began art school there before travelling to Paris when he was 18 to study at the famed École des Beaux-Arts. He started winning accolades for his work while still there, but moved to Egypt in 1890. He spent two years there both studying the ancient Egyptian monuments and travelling the Nile and Sahara, drawing and painting the people he met there – work that was later displayed and awarded in exhibitions in Paris, Egypt, and the United States.
Pape moved to Boston in 1894 and started the Eric Pape School of Art in 1898. His popularity and connections among the state’s rich and powerful continued to grow as he was commissioned to do massive salon portraits for the mansions of New England’s elites. At the same time, he developed broader fame and a thriving business illustrating for popular magazines and the theater. His interest in theater extended to doing set design work for popular plays at theaters in Gloucester, where he had a home.
A Campaign Blitz
It’s unclear what specifically drew Pape so passionately to the cause of “Old Ironsides,” but his career trajectory and entrepreneurial ambition gave him the tools to succeed. By the time the news of Constitution’s possible demise hit the papers in early December 1905, Pape was well positioned to both attract public attention to the ship’s rescue as well as enlist the support of Massachusetts politicians.
Pape wasted no time leveraging the headlines while the issue was still fresh in people’s minds. Within two weeks after Bonaparte’s proposal and Gulesian’s offer first made the newspapers, Pape initiated the petition and produced its elaborate presentation.
His petition was a work of art in itself, designed to both inspire Congress with the importance of the cause and attract wider public attention. The head of the massive petition features embossed artwork of Constitution battling HMS Guerriere, surrounded by decorative scrollwork and a detailed description of the ship’s significance. The text of the petition itself – an appeal to Congress to fund the ship – was elegantly handwritten, and the entire thing was bound onto a massive 41-inch-wide large scroll drum.
Additional signature sheets matching the size and material of the petition were riveted to each other end-to-end and rolled onto the scroll, eventually producing a 170-foot-long document that Pape took to Washington in late January 1906. He presented the scroll to the House of Representatives, where it was unrolled across the House chambers, covering congressmen’s desks and chairs. The Senate decided there was not enough room in the chamber to similarly display it there, but it was accepted by the Senate and then taken to the White House for presentation to President Theodore Roosevelt. From there, it was displayed in a reception hall outside the office of the Secretary of the Navy, Charles Bonaparte, whose original proposal to scuttle the ship had given rise to the petition drive and Congressional action.
After successfully passing committee hearings in the spring, Congress that summer appropriated $100,000 for the restoration of the ship. That critical restoration returned the ship to its sailing appearance and removed the barn from over the top deck, which had been added while the ship was serving as a receiving ship at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.
Pape’s petition was eventually archived in multiple rolls at the U.S. Naval Academy Museum in Annapolis, Maryland, where it resides today. Pape continued his prolific illustration work for magazines and newspapers, including producing celebrity portraits for the New York Herald Tribune through the Great Depression. He died in New York City in 1938.
The Author(s)
Carl Herzog
Public Historian, USS Constitution Museum
Carl Herzog is the Public Historian at the USS Constitution Museum.
