 The following information was submitted by the artist's great-granddaughter Laurie Foulke-Green: A painter of famous clipper ships, he had a life-long fascination with the sea.
Born at Oyster Bay, Long Island on February 28, 1880, he was one of three sons of Theodore and Ida Foulke. The family's estate on Long Island was adjacend to that of Teddy Roosevelt. Foulke was directly descended from the Fish and Beekman families of New York and Admiral Brion of Venezuela who became famous during the country's fight for independence from Spain. Through his mother's side, he was descended from the Bartows and Blackwells; the Blackwells owned and sold Blackwell's Island, now Welfare Island, to the city of New York.
Already at the age of seven, he was sailing boats in Long Island Sound and drawing and painting magazine pictures of ships. At age fifteen he took excursion parties out in his own 40 foot craft, the money for which he had borrowed from his mother. Almost ready to pay her back, he got caught in a heavy fog on an excursion, bringing the ship to safe harbor. One of the passengers, an official of the Atlantic Passenger Line was so impressed by his seamanship that he offered young Foulke a job, which is when his father realized what his son had been up to. Since he was determined to go to sea, his father got him a job on the Caracao, a ship owned by relatives. Two weeks into the journey, Foulke found out that the two-week cruise to South America was instead a journey around Cape Horn to Australia, and thus a fifty year career at sea began. At twenty he assumed his first command, that of an 87 feet Gloucester fishing smack from New York to Honduras with a supposed cargo of farm implements which turned out to be contraband arms. He received a Captain's license for small steam vessels at twenty-one, and a Master's certificate for unlimited tonnage at age twenty-two. In 1904, he received a certificate of honor in recognition of his heroic rescue efforts from the bridge of his ship in the General Slocum disaster in New York Harbor. He subsequently was engaged in the lumber trade between Mexico and New York, and in 1913, commandeered the four masted schooner Albania, a relief ship taking provisions to the starving people of that country. In 1914, he was in charge of the S.S. Alameda in the Central American fruit trade, and served his government for nearly two decades after that. At age fifty-two, he retired from seafaring and settled in Philadelphia, devoting his time to painting ships. Entirely self-taught, he gradually mastered his new craft to the point where he finished a major canvas in two weeks, and smaller ones in days.
Captain Bayard Fish Foulke died on July 7, 1961 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania of prostate cancer. Sources include:
New York Times article, 1937
Article in Progress April 16, 1959, Clearfield, Pennsylvania
additional information courtesy of Laurie Foulke-Green from family history
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