Plate 6.
The penultimate plate in the series depicts men in the waiting room at the Admiralty. However there are only a handful people in naval costume, including an elderly midshipman standing in the middle dressed in a blue sailor suit with an empty right sleeve, and a young man, presumably Master B, dressed in full lieutenant uniform and looking up arrogantly towards the older midshipman. The room is quite sparsely furnished except for three chairs and a rug. On one chair a thin older man reads the ‘Morning Post’, while in the background a younger man is asleep. On the right, the seated man is writing D A M NA on the floorboard with his walking stick, this could be short for ‘damnation’ – all the signs suggest that visitors to the Admiralty were expected to wait for some time! Standing in front of the seated man is a well fed gentleman and his son, dressed almost identically. In the large man’s back pocket is a slip of paper which reads ‘vote and interest’.

Inscribed on the wall behind:
'In sore affliction, tried by God's command / Of patience, Job, the great example stands / But in these days, a trial more severe / Had been Job's lot, if God had sent him here.'

Inscribed below the image, a well-chosen line from Othello:
‘Tis the curse of service that preferment goes by favor & affection’

Other versions of this image in the collection are: PAD4726, PAD4810, PAI5984, PAJ1834, PAJ3897.