The artist, Captain Cowper Phipps Coles RN, is known to have served on the ‘Ganges’ under Capt. Barrington Reynolds, who was in command between October 1838 and April 1842, whilst the ship was in the Mediterranean involved in the Syrian crisis (William Richard O’Byrne (1849), A Naval Biographical Dictionary).

He later had a great influence on naval ship design in the 1860s, advocating particularly the then revolutionary idea of armoured turret ships with a low freeboard. This was successful when, as in the case of the conversion in 1862 of ‘Royal Sovereign’ from wooden ship to iron clad, the ship had only three light masts; but when he rigged the ship heavily, as in the case of the ‘Captain’ (constructed to his plans in 1869), it proved catastrophic. Cowper Coles was drowned with 475 of the crew when the ‘Captain’ capsized in a squall on the night of 6 September 1870.

Medium includes grey wash.