Thames barges and other small sailing craft off the Royal Naval College, Greenwich. In the centre a river passenger steamer is coming into Greenwich Pier, which is crowded with visitors, and a working Thames tug heads downstream on the right. The view is from the west and probably in the fine summer of 1953, since the artist exhibited the painting at the Royal Society of Marine Artists exhibition of 1954. There is reported ground to believe he hoped to tempt the Museum to buy it, and Frank Carr - then its Director and a great expert on Thames barges - well exceeded his payment authority in being persuaded to do so at the opening of the show, though subsequently gaining Trustee agreement. The subject is in fact as much a celebration of the weather and the dramatic summer clouds as of the architecture and river landscape. Major work was going on at this time alongside the Pier to excavate the dry-dock into which the 'Cutty Sark' was floated for preservation in 1954 but Wilkinson avoids including such utilitarian detail in a scene which shows both his painterly strengths and why he was such a successful artist for such things as railway and other travel posters. The Bank of England owns another version of the same view, though the shipping and sky differ.