Technique includes etching. Text in German below image. The occasion shown is the court-martial held on Augustus Keppel following public accusations of ineptitude at the inconclusive Battle of Ushant against the French - who were backing the American rebellion - in 1778. Keppel had asked for the inquiry when his second-in-command, Hugh Palliser, commanding the rear of the fleet, had joined the criticism of him. Keppel was a notable Whig, Palliser a Tory and protege of Lord Sandwich, first Lord of the Admiralty in Lord North's by then unpopular administration. While Keppel's tactical command had certainly not been distinguished he was fully vindicated and paraded as a popular hero. Palliser subsequently demanded a court-martial to vindicate himself, which it did though commenting that he should have kept Keppel better informed of the disabled condition of the rearguard. Palliser never served again though in 1782 Sandwich saw him appointed Governor of Greenwich Hospital, just before the North government fell. His thanks to Sandwich were to commission Gainsborough's portrait of him (see BHC3009), for presentation to the Hospital. Keppel was briefly First Lord of the Admiralty in the Rockingham administration of 1782 and died in 1786. Reynolds's portrait of him painted for Lady Rockingham is BHC2820. 'The Keppel affair' split the Navy on damagingly partisan lines at the same time as Britain was losing the campaign to hold onto its American colonies. [PvdM 2/23]