Masts

In 1930 Rhoda Bickerdike went to Newfoundland to work as a missionary. She returned to Britain in 1933 and staged two exhibitions of the paintings she had made during her travels. In 1934 she went again to Newfoundland, staying in St. John's.

Bickerdike wrote an account of her time in St. John's which was later published in the Canadian Parliamentary Review (Rhoda Dawson 'The Wharves of St. John's, Newfoundland' Canadian Parliamentary Review, Summer 1992). In it she describes the 'Terra Nova', the main ship depicted in this watercolour. The vessel had carried Captain Scott to the Antarctic, but by the 1930s it had been converted into a sealer.