The Elizabeth II portrait on these coins was officially known as “the 1959 portrait,” according to Leslie W. Harris in the July 1967 issue of Coins magazine, but as he notes, it had actually appeared on various colonial issues beginning in 1953.
As the twin dates 1609 and 1959 suggest, this big silver coin commemorates the 350th anniversary of Bermuda’s founding as a British colony. What two ships are illustrated is less clear, however. Krause calls them Patience and Deliverance (the two ships built by the survivors of the wrecked Sea Venture, which had been on its way to Jamestown).
But the ship at top doesn’t seem locally built. Instead it looks something like Sea Venture, and indeed, both my old (1988) Schön and Thomas W. Becker’s 1962 Pageant of World Commemorative Coins name Sea Venture as one of the two illustrated ships. But the other ship? Schön says it’s “a sailing boat of the Island’s Administration,” while Becker calls it a “Bermuda Fitted Dinghy which is known the world over for its racing ability.”
The image of the lower boat—particularly in concert with its sailors—makes Becker’s “Fitted Dinghy” a good guess, but is the ship at top really Sea Venture? She seems similar aft, but Sea Venture was multi-masted—so maybe the single-masted ship at top is the Deliverance, or the Patience, perhaps?
v.