With its loose handling and unfinished areas, this watercolour is likely to be a preparatory work for the large oil painting exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1853, the second of Stanfield's paintings of the battle of Trafalgar. The subject is 'Victory' towed into Gibraltar by 'Neptune' seven days after the storm which swept many ships into the bay between Cadiz and Cape Trafalgar. The exhibited oil, with its subsequent pair of the 'Siege of San Sebastian' were bought by Sir Samuel Morton Peto MP, the railway contractor who had erected Nelson's Column for his house, Somerleyton Hall, Suffolk. In 1862-4 Morton went bankrupt and sold the House with contents to his friend, Francis Crossley MP, the Halifax carpet manufacturer whose son became the first Lord Somerleyton. It is now run by the current Lord Somerleyton as an inderpendent historic house open to the public, the Stanfield pictures being in the dining room. (See also BHC2511).