(Updated, November 2023) Knell was one of the leading and most accomplished marine painters in 19th-century Britain, with paintings in the Royal Collection. This grandly ambitious and dramatic canvas demonstrates why. It shows a battered and storm-damaged Indiaman, just returned from the East into the Thames, against a glowing golden sky from which the clouds are now receding. Like Henry O’Neil’s ‘The Parting Cheer’ (ZBA4022), it implicitly points to the larger imperial context of maritime Victorian Britain, and the uncertainties and anxieties associated with it.

The two vessels bow-on in the right distance are both Royal Naval ships, one traditional - a sailing three-decker - and the other apparently a new steam-assisted iron-clad, emphasizing the theme of changing times. It was previously suggested as being the picture that Knell exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1864 (no.148), entitled 'On the Medway - bringing a disabled ship into port', but that has now been identified as a much smaller composition with the artist's title on the reverse of the frame. It shows two hulks at anchor on the left and, just right of centre, a steamer side-towing a dismasted ship in from seaward with only its unrigged lower mainmast standing, both in starboard broadside view.