This coloured lithograph depicts the attack on St Jean d’Acre on 3rd November 1840. Ranged on the left, in close-reefed starboard view (with matching inscriptions below each), are Pique, Bellerophon, Gorgon (the steam paddle sloop in the left foreground), Thunderer, Princess Charlotte, Powerful, Phoenix and Revenge; ranged on the right, in close-reefed port view (with matching inscriptions), are an ‘Austrian corvette’, an ‘Austrian frigate’, Carysfort, Talbot, Guerriera, Castor, an ‘Austrian frigate’, Hasard [sic], Medea, Edinburg [sic], Stromboli, Benbow, Turkish [Adml?], Vesuvius and Wasp. Prominent in the left foreground is the paddle steamer Phoenix, from on board which Admiral Robert Stopford (1768-1847) commanded and observed the bombardment, thus obtaining a view less obscured by smoke. The moment shown would appear to coincide with the huge explosion around four o’clock in the afternoon of the city's powder magazine, which claimed over 1,000 lives.