HMS 'Bombay' was an 84-gun second-rate ship of the line, built (of teak) for the Royal Navy at Bombay Dockyard and launched on 17 February 1828. In 1861 the ship was fitted with auxiliary screw propulsion and in 1864 was on the South American station. On 14 December, while engaged in target practice near the Islas de Flores on the Montevideo (Uruguay) side of the of the River Plate estuary, a fire started on board of which the cause was never determined. It spread rapidly out of control through the well-ventilated ship, destroying it with the loss of 93 out of its crew of 619.

The artist, George Cochrane Kerr (c.1825-1907) was primarily a marine and coastal painter who exhibited fairly regularly at the Society of British Artists from 1873/4 to 1893, originally from Petersham, Hants, then mainly from London addresses to 1888/9 and finally from Gillingham and then Rochester. He also had 12 works at the Royal Academy from 1878 to 1897 as well as exhibiting widely elsewhere. This work is inscribed lower left: 'G. E. Kerr / After Beechey', indicating that the painting is a copy of Richard Brydges Beechey's 'Destruction of HMS Bombay by fire off Monte Video, Feb. 1865', which was no. 34 at the RA in 1866 (see PAD6226). Kerr made two copies of this painting – one is the present picture, and the other is in the Russell Cotes Art Gallery in Bournemouth. The Museum's is the smaller and lighter-toned of two versions and may have been done largely from a photograph such as PAD6226. It was eventually presented to the Greenwich Hospital Collection. This was probably after 1922 since it is not listed in the last printed edition of its Naval Gallery catalogue.