Lot 727: Antonio de Simone (Italian, fl.1877-1910)

Antonio de Simone (Italian, fl.1877-1910)
The steam yacht Schievan in the Bay of Naples
signed and dated 'de Simone/1910' (lower right), and inscribed 'S.Y. Schievan' (lower left)
bodycolour
15¾ x 25 1/8 in. (40 x 63.8 cm.)

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 15% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.
Pictured above in 1910, by which time she was owned by Captain F.L. de Sales La Terrire, Schievan had been launched in 1897 with the name of Rosabelle. Designed by Cox & King and built at Leith by Ramage & Ferguson for Mr. Theodore Pim of Crayford, London, she was rigged as a schooner and fitted with a 3-cylinder engine from her builders' own workshops. Registered at 308 tons gross (175 net & 439 Thames), she measured 147 feet in length with a 26 foot beam and was rated A1 by Lloyd's Register's surveyors. Subsequently sold and briefly named Sicilia, she was then purchased by Captain La Terrire in 1908 who renamed her Schievan and who still had her when war was declared in August 1914. Laid up for the duration, she returned to peacetime pleasures in the 1920s and 1930s until hired by the Admiralty at the beginning of the Second World War which then bought her outright in 1942. Used as a degaussing vessel against magnetic mines from 1941, she was given to the Royal Norwegian Navy in September 1945.