This is a study used for Wyllie's oil painting of 'The Storming of Zeebrugge Mole, St George's Day, 23 April 1918', (exhibited at the Royal Academy, 1931) now at HMS 'Excellent', the naval gunnery school at Whale Island, Portsmouth. The picture shows HMS 'Vindictive' alongside the mole and marines moving forward down it, this figure being in the bottom right corner, with the gun at a slightly different angle. This being so, the study may have been done in the 1920s when Wyllie was apparently commissioned to paint the picture for the Royal Naval Engineering School at Keyham. He died of a heart attack, aged 79, on the evening he arrived in London from Portsmouth to oversee his 1931 entries being hung.