Oil painting. This large canvas shows a sea battle of the First Dutch War, 1652-54, the sky darkened and invisible from smoke and with a ship on fire beyond others across the background. One close-in and bow-on to the left has men scrambling on board from boats in the water, apparently as boarding parties according to the artist's account: part of the stern of another is seen at far right. In between, seen from off the port quarter, a small English two-decker is shown with holed sails and shattered rigging, bow-down in the water. It flies the St George flag as an ensign above what may be the quartered Royal arms high on the tafferel but with the St George cross and Irish harp of the Commonwealth period as larger carved and painted decoration below, the First Dutch War having been precipitated by the passing of the Cromwellian Navigation Act of 1651. The overall impression is of a lull in foreground gunfire but with action continuing beyond.

The painting was exhibited by Silas at the Royal Academy in 1934 (no. 204) and he discussed it in an interview with the 'London Evening News', published on 8 May that year. In this Silas - who went to Australia in 1907 - explained that he had started it in a boarding house in Perth, Western Australia, in 1914, having 'sent to England for the best canvas procurable - the idea being that a masterpiece should be executed with the most desirable materials ... The subject was a naval engagement between Blake and Van Tromp, and they were to fight it out with vigour...'. The First World War then intervened, in which Silas joined the Australian forces and soon left for Gallipoli (and was later mentioned in dispatches). It was only in 1924, while passing again through Perth, that he retrieved it from the friends who had kept it, covered in dust and cobwebs. He rolled it up to go in his cabin-trunk and brought it back with him to England in 1925. It then remained in his 'lumber cupboards' in London until he one day pulled it out to show colleagues the quality of the canvas, 'saying I intended cutting it up to use for less ambitious subjects'. They persuaded him not to on that occasion and he claimed that the same routine happened on several later ones, until his wife suggested he finish it especially for submission to the Academy in 1934. It was one of two pictures by him shown there but appears not to have found a buyer, since he either specifically bequeathed it to the Museum on his death in 1972 or it was offered as a gift of that status from his estate. [PvdM 6/22]