The Gibraltar Magazine

The ‘she’ I refer to is the Statue of Freedom designed and molded by American sculptor Thomas Crawford. She stands 19’ 6” tall, weighs 15,000 pounds, holds a sheathed sword in her right hand and a laurel wreath of victory and the shield of the United States with thirteen stripes in her left hand. She is comprised of bronze with platinum tips to protect her from lightning.

So how did the Statue of Freedom end up spending a month so far from home and in Gibraltar of all places? Well, in the early 1800s Italy was the Mecca for Americans who went there to study the masterpieces of Michelangelo and other great artists of the renaissance. The Americans made frequent trips between the US and Italy and on most of these trips they stopped at Gibraltar.

Thomas Gibson Crawford was one of these Americans. He was only 25-years-old when he visited Gibraltar on his way to Rome. A native of New York Crawford had made the difficult decision to leave his family because the prospects in his home country were limited, partly because the prudish America of the time considered the naked statues of Italy too risqué for public consumption. Crawford’s biographer Robert L Gale wrote:

“He could not, for example, study nude models and hope to retain his reputation, and if he fashioned a sketch in clay, he could not readily obtain a block of marble for a more durable translation of his idea. Bronze casting at this time was a secret jealously kept from ingenious Yankees by founders in Paris and Munich.

“Casts of European masterpieces were kept under lock and key; when groups of them were shown publicly, the exposures were often regarded as scandalous. Even engravings of statues were hard to come by…

It is little wonder then, that progress in American sculpture was slow and that Crawford hastened to make his way to Rome, with its museums and monuments, its masters, schools and academies… his path lay clear enough ahead of him: he was going to Gibraltar, then on to Leghorn and Civitavecchia, and then over the Campagna to Rome.” In the end Crawford made Rome his home and returned to America only occasionally. On one of these rare trips he met and married Louisa Ward who would play a part in the fate of the Statue of Freedom.

Crawford worked and studied hard and eventually his talent was recognised in his homeland and in 1854 he was commissioned to design the Statue of Freedom. He created the plaster model for the statue in his studio in Rome, sadly he would never live to see the finished product cast in bronze. In 1857 his left eye began to bulge and his doctor determined that he had a tumour. He went to Paris and London to seek out the finest doctors but died in London on 18th October that year.

It was left to his widow Louisa to supervise the completion of work in his studios and see that the finished model found its way to America. The model was packed into six crates and loaded onto a small bark which turned out to be rather unseaworthy.

The bark left Leghorn in April 1858 but sprang a leak and was forced to put into Gibraltar for repairs. The problems turned out to be much more serious than expected and the crew and the statue would spend a month on the Rock before the bark was seaworthy. After leaving Gibraltar the sad little ship encountered storms, developed more leaks and put into Bermuda where it was officially condemned and sold for scrap. Fortunately ‘Freedom’ was safely landed and put aboard a more reliable vessel and finally reached New York eight months after leaving Italy. She didn’t arrive in Washington, her final home, until April of 1859.

The casting in bronze, by Clark Mills, commenced in 1860 but the outbreak of the Civil War the following year hampered progress and it wasn’t until 1863, with Washington protected by thousands of Union troops, that the Statue of Freedom was hoisted three hundred feet to the top of the new and waiting Dome.

On 2nd December 1863 thirty-five guns roared in salute from Capitol Hill. Guns from the 12 Federal forts protecting the city answered and Crawford’s seven-and-a-half ton lady began her vigil.