A group on a bench on the north side of the Rysbrack statue of George II in the centre of the Grand Square of Greenwich Hospital. Left to right: a respectable young woman with a babe in arms; a boy in naval dress of short jacket and white trousers, leaning on the knee of a Greenwich Pensioner with a wooden left peg-leg, and a pedlar standing by the bench to the right. The boy's hat on the paving appears to be the distinctive leather cap of the Greenwich Hospital School, which fits with his dress. The Pensioner is showing him a framed print of the French flagship 'L'Orient' blowing up at the Battle of the Nile in 1798 (so inscribed), with the pedlar holding two other prints similarly framed.

The narrative thus appears to be of the young mother, possibly a widow, and her son, with the latter contemplating his future naval career (not too enthusiastically?) as the Pensioner - conceivably his grandfather - tells the tale of the Nile. The pedlar, possibly an ex-soldier from his cap and jacket, looks on hoping for a sale of his print. Other Pensioners and Hospital visitors are visible on the Upper Square behind, with the Royal Observatory in the background. Ward was a well-known genre painter and Royal Academician, but if this print is from an oil painting it was not apparently an exhibited one and its whereabouts are not currently known.