This is a half-length 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 way, en masse. 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. It was one of his last exhibits at the Academy since he died just before the 1931 exhibition opened.