A three-quarter length portrait standing facing to the left, painted the year after Dilkes captured a fleet of French merchantmen and their convoy, off the Channel Islands. He is wearing a brown velvet coat and a full bottom light brown wig. He holds his baton in his right hand and rests it against a stone plinth on the far left. A naval action can be seen on the right and the red of battle tints the painting. At the Battle of Vigo Bay 1702 Dilkes commanded the ‘Somerset’. After Sir Cloudesley Shovell’s return from the Mediterranean in 1707, Dilkes succeeded him in command and died at Leghorn in the same year. The portrait is signed ‘G.Kneller,f’ and inscribed ‘Sir Thomas Dilkes, Rere Admll of the Red’.