This print, inscribed 'Edwd Thompson Esqr', is a portrait of Captain Edward Thompson and shows him in the full-dress uniform of that rank introduced in 1774. Thompson was the son of a Hull merchant and had an interesting and modestly successful career at sea, mainly in the Royal Navy, including fighting at and writing an account of the Battle of Quiberon Bay in 1759. A man of some initiative he was court-martialled and acquiitted twice for taking independent decisions in difficult circumstances, took great care of his men - with whom he was very popular- and the education of his young officers. While having a normal Royal Naval career and being sufficiently well regarded to enjoy employment in periods of peace when others were on half-pay, he was also a fairly prolific and successful author and poet (or at least versifier),with many friends in artistic circles in London, and was widely known in the Navy as 'Poet Thompson'. In 1784 he sailed for West Africa in the 'Grampus' (50 guns), having successfully proposed a surveying expedition there. He returned home later in the year having caught yellow fever but sailed again, with the 'Nautilus' (16 guns) as consort in 1785 to complete work of the previous year and go on to investigate the possibility of establishing a new penal colony in south-west Africa, of which he hoped to become governor. This project was part of the investigations of replacing the (by then independent) east-coast states of North America as a destination for transported convicts, resolved in 1788 by establishment of the 'Botany Bay' colony in New South Wales, Australia. However, Thompson never reached southern Africa: he died of fever on the 'Grampus' in the Gulf of Guinea on 16 January 1786, and was buried at sea there the following day