Image: Isaac Cruikshank - A New Catamaran Expedition!!! (1805)

Description: British engraving, a political satire cartoon by Isaac Cruikshank, titled A New Catamaran Expedition!!!", 1805. It is a detailed scene with various speech balloons. William Pitt the Younger (Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports and former Prime Minister) looks on from Walmer Castle, as a fleet of fishing boats sails out to attack a French fort across the English Channel. Pitt is saying, "If this does not succeed I'll never Catamaran again as long as I live." The Bilingsgate Cutter, in foreground, carries four fishwives (back then a shrewish woman stereotype) to terrorize the French. They are armed with a "potatoe magazine" (sack of potatoes, perhaps to throw) and two bottles of "royal gin" aimed like cannon. The women are shouting: "We'll pepper you scoundrels", "Give it 'em well, my hearties.", "Yea ye dirty Blackguards we'll soon be with you.", and "Look at our ammunition, you poltroons." Coming from the French fort is the reply, "Begar dese le Catamarans wid a Vengeance." (apparently eye dialect for something like "Bugger this, catamarans with a vengeance"). The point of the piece was to satirise Pitt's recruitment of 35 luggers manned by fishermen as a seaborne militia. The word "catamaran" was used for a fire-raft (used against French ports from 1804) and also a quarrelsome woman.
Title: Isaac Cruikshank - A New Catamaran Expedition!!! (1805)
Credit: Isaac Cruikshank - A New Catamaran Expedition!!! (1805).png: British Cartoon Prints Collection, Prints and Photographs Division, United States Library of Congress; LCCN 94501555, CPH 3g02899, Reproduction No. LC-USZC4-2899.[1] Derivative work: Hogweard
Author: Isaac Cruikshank (publisher: Willm. Holland, London)
Permission: Public domain (predates copyright law)
Usage Terms: Public domain
License: Public domain
Attribution Required?: No