The Demerara figurehead
Her figurehead had been carved by Anderson's uncles, the Williams brothers. It represented a mythical chieftain from the Caribbean, standing nearly three metres tall. Wearing a tobacco-leaf head-dress and skirt and brandishing a spear, he held out a plant, unidentified, but representing the bounty of the West Indies.
The figurehead was removed from the ship and acquired by a tradesman who displayed it on a building adjacent to the Stone Bridge at Quay Head. This building would later become known as Demerara House. It remained there for almost 70 years until 1931, when, in preparation for demolition of the building, the figurehead was "wrapped up like an Egyptian mummy" and taken down. It was then presented to Alderman James Fuller Eberle, who was the chairman of Bristol Museum and Art Gallery and a member of the Bristol Savages arts society. Despite numerous pleas from the public to keep the figurehead in the public domain, it became the property of the Bristol Savages and was removed to the Red Lodge, where the Savages had their headquarters.
It is something of a mystery as to what then became of the figurehead, although it is known that an attempt was made to place it in the Red Lodge garden. However, "it was found to be so decayed... that it could not be set up there" (Western Daily Press, 8th February 1932). Nothing further was heard of it until 1942, when Mr Reginald Bussell was offered a surviving fragment - the unidentified plant - which, according to his own account, he acquired for the price of a pint of beer in the Somerset Arms pub in Stokes Croft. He looked after it until 1964, when he donated it to the Museum.
You can see a smaller replica of the figurehead outside the Drawbridge pub next to the Hippodrome on the Centre.