The Cowes pilot cutter 'Fox' with the number '4 C' on the mainsail is seen here in gusty, grey weather, passing ahead of the quarantine hulk lying at anchor on the Motherbank (shoal) in the Solent, roughly between Newport and Ryde on the north-east side of the Isle of Wight. The hulk is the converted former 38-gun frigate 'Menelaus' which spent its last 60 years as a hospital and later quarantine ship, latterly opposite the village of Binstead, Isle of Wight, until sold for breaking up in 1897.

The need for such vessels was demonstrated in January 1866 when the emigrant ship 'Hertha' (870 tons, with 270 passengers and crew), on charter to the New York and Hamburg Steam Shipping Company, called at Spithead (off Portsmouth) while bound from Hamburg to New York carrying German emigrants. While lying there it was found that some of the passengers were suffering from epidemic sickness - up to 40 being reported as having died en route already - and the Portsmouth authorities rapidly ordered the ship to the more isolated Motherbank.

A parliamentary question reported in Hansard on 20 April elicited that 'The epidemics under which the passengers were suffering were small pox (of which none died), diphtheria, and typhus. The bodies of those that died were sown up in new canvas, with iron bars attached, and were buried at a red buoy on the Motherbank, in six fathoms of water (dead low water, spring tides). This red buoy is about one mile and three-quarters from the shore, and about two miles from Ryde Pier. Thirteen deaths from diphtheria (all young children) and one from typhus occurred at the Motherbank; it is not known how many died on the passage from Bremen to Spithead. It is believed about thirty. The tonnage of the Hertha is 870 tons.... Seven invalids and twenty-one members of their families were left in the quarantine hulk after the departure of the "Hertha".' In response to the suggestion the hulk be moved further away from Ryde and Binstead and nearer to Newport as less populated, the spokesman (H.A. Bruce MP) added: 'The Government are advised that the present position of the quarantine hulk is the best that can be found. It is one mile and three-quarters from the shore, in a well sheltered situation with good anchorage; the prevalent winds are south and south-west, which would oppose infection reaching the Isle of Wight.'

Fowles (1815-83) was an Isle of Wight artist living in Ryde, so the view is presumably from the nearby shore. The two projections above the hulk's deck-house are suspended canvas-tube ventilators, either to help air the deckhouse or decks below. The ship flies the red ensign astern and another red flag (possibly of a warning nature) on a light mast aft: other shipping in the distance is local Solent traffic. The picture presumably dates to before the much larger 'Edgar' was also stationed as a second quarantine vessel on the Motherbank: it is signed and dated 1865 (lower left) and was given to the Museum by A.P. Austin in 1950.