A half-length portrait to the right, showing Caswell in blue battle-dress with his arms folded. Caswell was a young engineer officer in the merchant fleet. This portrait was painted aboard the 'Pacific Enterprise', a ship of the Norfolk and North American Steamship Company, in or after 1943.
The artist, Bernard Hailstone, trained at Goldsmiths and the Royal Academy Schools. At the start of the Second World War, he joined the Auxiliary Fire Service and painted some of the scenes he witnessed during the London Blitz. In 1941 the War Artists Advisory Committee commissioned him to paint civilian defence subjects. Released from the fire service, he moved to Hull in 1943. He continued work in the Mediterranean and North Africa before joining South East Asia Command, where he painted Lord Mountbatten.