This painting shows a full-rigged mid-19th-century merchant ship under reduced sail in starboard-broadside view, in a lively sea. The name 'Annie Jane' is painted in small white capitals on the bow. Five other vessels in the picture (one being a paddle steamer) and an isolated-rock lighthouse in the right background, which may be Smeaton's Eddystone tower, suggest the intended location shown is the English Channel. As no other suitably sized ship called 'Annie Jane' seems to exist this appears to be that built in Quebec in 1852-53 for Holderness & Chilton of Liverpool (and registered there). It was delivered from Quebec in summer 1853, possibly with an initial cargo of timber, since reported to have been 'completed' (i.e. fitted) in Liverpool to carry emigrants back to Canada. It left for Montreal and Quebec in August 1853 under an experienced captain called William Mason (d. 1857), but after being damaged in a gale had to return for further refit. Sailing again in September with cargo and about 430 emigrants and 45 crew on board, it was wrecked with great loss in another storm on Vatersay, in the Barra group of the Outer Hebrides, on the 28th of that month. The dead were buried in a mass grave on Vatersay, marked with a monument which still stands and bears the inscription: 'On 28th Septr 1853 the ship Annie Jane with emigrants from Liverpool to Quebec was totally wrecked in this bay and threefourths [sic] of the crew and passengers numbering about 350 men women and children were drowned and their bodies interred here'. The plinth below bears the biblical line: 'And the sea gave up the dead which were in it. Rev. XX 13'. Secondary reports say the ship had three decks, was 55 metres long (179 feet), of 1294 tons and was registered A1 at Lloyd's; also - wrongly in one or two references - that it was a brig, since certainly a full-rigged vessel as shown here. It does not, however, appear in the published Lloyd's Registers for 1853 or 1854 probably because lost too early to be included, so the source of the registry information remains to be confirmed (possibly local records or the loss inquiry by Captain W. F. Beechey R.N., reported in the press in March 1854). In the picture the ship is shown flying a 'number' in flags at the mizzen but the 'Annie Jane's' is not yet known to check this. Joseph Heard (d. 1859) was a Liverpool ship portraitist and why the canvas is attributed to him is now uncertain, since it is not signed, though this is not critical for the identity of the ship. The only curious point is why one intended for Liverpool to Canada voyages is apparently shown in the English Channel. It may have been painted speculatively to sell to the captain (who survived) or the owners, following 'Annie Jane's' arrival in Liverpool and without knowing her intended voyage. This at least seems more likely than anyone commissioning a portrait of it shown this way, or at all, after its early and catastrophic loss. [PvdM 1/16]