An incident during the Seven Years War, 1756-63, between France and Britain. 1759 was a year of victories for Britain and on 26 June Admiral Sir Charles Saunders' powerful fleet, which had conveyed Major-General James Wolfe's land forces to Canada, anchored off the Ile d'Orleans on the St Lawrence River, below Quebec. At midnight on 28 June the French attacked with seven fire-ships and two fire-rafts. Saunders had received advance warning and the boats of the fleet were sent out loaded with his men, who grappled the fire-vessels and towed them safely clear of his ships. On 13 September Wolfe's infantry were landed in boats below the Heights of Abraham and scaled them during the night to reach the plateau outside the city. There they defeated the French army of the Marquis de Montcalm, in a set-piece battle of which both Wolfe and Montcalm were the leading casualties. On 18 September the city capitulated, marking the beginning of the end for the French colonies in North America. Within the year mainland Canada was completely in British hands.

This picture is based on a much larger one by Samuel Scott (BHC0391) but with some differences. In the left foreground is the south bank of the St Lawrence, with one of the French fire-ships beached and burning. Another on the left is being towed and there are sailors on the shore. Between and beyond these two fire-ships is a third being grappled and to the right a fourth, bow-on, is being towed in. In the centre foreground is the 'Stirling Castle', in port-bow view, with a fire-ship to starboard and another astern of her. To the right of this is a ship under way, in starboard-quarter view, while in the right foreground two boats are being rowed upstream. Beyond them the anchored fleet is visible. The Ile d'Orleans can be seen in the right foreground and beyond the fire-rafts is Quebec.

Serres was a well-born Frenchman from Gascony who ran away to sea in merchant service rather than follow family wish that he enter the Church. He probably arrived in England as a naval prisoner of war, took up painting and settled there. His early paintings show the influence of Brooking and Monamy's interpretations of Dutch art but he rapidly achieved recognition for his more documentary visual accounts of sea actions of the Seven Years War, 1756-63, becoming established as England's leading marine painter. His work was even more in demand in the 1770s and 1780s recording the naval history of the War of American Independence. In 1768 Serres was a founder member of the Royal Academy and at the end of his life its librarian. A well respected and sociable man, he was appointed Marine Painter to George III in 1780. The painting is signed and dated, 'D Serres 1767'.