Inscribed in pencil lower right, 'San Josef'. The 112-gun 'San Josef' (or in Spanish, 'San Jose') was captured by Nelson at the Battle of Cape St Vincent in 1797, taken into the Royal Navy and ended her career on harbour duty at Plymouth where she was broken up in 1849. This image shows the process mid-way through, with the ship floated into dry-dock in Plymouth Dockyard for the purpose, so the impression that demolition is near-complete is misleading since the lower hull is out of sight. It appears to have been common Royal Navy practice to break up its biggest ships rather than selling them to contractors to do it, as in the case of middle and smaller-sized ones, at least to the mid-19th century. When the 'Temeraire' (98/ 104 guns) was due for dismantling in 1838 she was lying at Sheerness and was sold by auction (with 12 others) at Somerset House on 16 August. On being bought by John Beatson of Rotherhithe, he had her towed up river on 5-6 September to be dismantled there at his private ship-breaking wharf (as represented by Turner's famous though non-literal painting of the event). As noted at the time, she was both the largest ship yet sold by the Navy for private breaking, and the largest ever taken so far up the Thames at all to that date. In fact, and presumably because of her size, the Navy Board had previously considered jury-rigging her and sailing her round to Plymouth for dismantling: why they changed their mind is not clear, but presumably because assured that a successful Thames tow (which needed two tugs at the top of the next spring tides) would be practical. Even then, the breaking of very large ships in the Thames only became common after Castle's Wharf -later called Castle's 'Admiralty Wharf' - at Charlton (downstream of Rotherhithe, between Greenwich and Woolwich) was established in the 1860s. While this drawing is an interesting one and well done, its received attribution to Stanfield is questionable. He is not otherwise known to have been at Plymouth in 1849, nor is it convincingly his style or subject. It might be by Nicholas Condy or his son Nicholas Matthew, who were both local Plymouth marine specialists. [PvdM 7/06; amended 3/14]