'Edgar’ is depicted centrally in starboard-broadside view, flying a red ensign and a red pennant at her maintop, under full sail, with the guns of her main deck run out. Smaller vessels either side frame the central part of the composition, which juxtaposes ‘Edgar’’s bow with a simply drawn offshore lighthouse (i.e. as indicated in the artist’s caption, the Eddystone, off the southern Cornwall-Devon border). The horizon is punctuated with two larger, probably three-masted, ships.

The ship in question must be the 74-gun third-rate ‘Edgar’, commissioned under her first captain, John Elliot, in May 1779, whose first action came on 16 January 1780, when she fought in the Battle of Cape St Vincent as part of Admiral Sir George Rodney's fleet. Elliot spent most of the remaining years of the war commanding ‘Edgar’ in the Channel, before being moved into ‘Romney’ in June 1782. This picture must therefore record her at some point between Jan 1780 and Jun 1782.

Recent research has established that Toddy was a Greenwich pensioner 1783-95 who, according to inscriptions on other similar works, painted without the use of his hands, bar his left thumb. See artist description for full biographical details.

The Edgar was renamed Retribution in 1815 and broken up in 1835.