Rare 1859 watercolour by Captain Alexander McNeilledge
Scotsman charted Lake Erie and used his talents to paint
Ben Lennox, Head of Sales at Miller & Miller, is pictured above with the Captain McNeilledge Port Dover Ship Painting offered as lot 192 in the October 11th sale of Canadiana.
Life on the high seas for Alexander McNeilledge began when he was just eight years old and it brought him face to face with danger and excitement in equal measure.
Born in Greenock, Scotland in 1791, the young Alex was introduced to life on the high seas when as a boy he accompanied his sea captain father on an ocean voyage to Newfoundland. In subsequent years, he worked his way up from cabin boy to log keeper and by 30 he was captain.
As such, McNeilledge travelled the world and his exploits are the stuff of seafaring legend. He was shipwrecked on Long Island in 1807, saw the Duke of Wellington in Lisbon, even caught a glimpse of deposed French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte in exile on the island of St. Helena in 1817.
Captain McNeilledge covered vast swaths of the globe, sailing to ports as far afield as China. He ran a naval blockade off Buenos Aires and endured robbery and plunder at the hands of pirates on the storied Spanish Main.
Settling in Port Dover, Ontario, McNeilledge began producing a series of navigational charts and maps for Lake Erie in the 1840s and his documents were widely used until the early 20th century. His journal filled a need, for without the captain’s well-observed navigational instructions and maps, many more vessels would undoubtedly have joined the underwater fleet.
In his later years, he began to make drawings of ships, which he presented as tokens of friendship to the captains of visiting vessels, as well as to relatives and neighbours. The drawings were often personalized by naming the ship after the wife, the mast after the husband, and smaller vessels after the children. Most were accompanied by captions depicting fanciful and fictitious voyages, and many were inscribed with humorous autobiographical comments, such as "Captain Alex McNeilledge -76 years- Use no specks – Chew no tobacco – Take only a wee drop as required”.
McNeilledge often presented his drawings, such as the example above, as tokens of friendship to the captains of visiting vessels, as well as to relatives and neighbours. Source.
One of McNeilledge’s rarely-offered paintings from 1859 is now being sold at Miller & Miller’s Oct. 11, 2025 Canadiana sale featuring the Louise & late Robert Levesque Collection. Lot 192, estimated at CA$12,000-$15,000, the 5.5” x 7.5” painting is in excellent condition, with strong colours. It’s watercolour and ink, inscribed on the back and signed lower right, "Alex McNeilledge, Aug. 13th, 1859".
Captain McNeilledge painted a similar scene of the clipper ship "Dorothy" for a family by the name of Williams, which is illustrated in the book Folk Treasures of Historic Ontario, by Elizabeth Price, Michael Bird, and Terry Kobayashi (plate 8, page 22).
A similar McNeilledge scene of the clipper ship "Dorothy" for a family by the name of Williams.
It would have been something to have been at that August 1859 dinner to witness firsthand when McNeilledge presented this lovely gift to his hostess, Mrs. John English. It was surely a grand evening with the captain entertaining everyone with stories of his many adventures travelling the world. No doubt he had quite a lot to talk about.
By Phillip Ross
Phillip Ross became fascinated with Canadian folk art in 1982 when he started making bi-weekly trips to Quebec to purchase folk art and antiques. He brought them to markets and exhibitions, mostly in Ontario and Quebec. With his wife Jeanine, they also had a shop named Old Church Trading in their century-old church in Norfolk County, Ontario, and later, after moving to nearby Port Dover, they ran a shop named Shadfly Antiques. Since December 2011, he has written multiple blog entries chronicling his collecting experiences on his site shadflyguy.com.
SALE INFORMATION:
Canadiana
Featuring the Louise & late Robert Levesque Collection
October 11, 2025 | 9am EST
A Miller & Miller Online Webcast Auction
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