The ‘Ganges’ is shown in port-broadside view under full sail, in a calm, just off what appears to be Sugarloaf Mountain. To her right, far in the background, appears other shipping (a mixture of sail and steam). In the right foreground corner, a very distinctively drawn group of exotic birds frolic near the water, a detail both charming in execution and somewhat incongruous in style.

Originally inscribed on canvas backing: “Ganges Flag Rr Adr Sir Robt Otway / Flag Capt S H Inglefield / Sr Alex. Milne was a Lieut / Adml Coffin”.

The watercolour was lent to HMS ‘Ganges’ from May 1967 to July 1976.

According to the Navy Lists, E. E. Vidal was purser on the ‘Ganges’ in September 1829 when she returned to Portsmouth, whereas while ‘Ganges’ was at Rio M’Arthur was her purser. A small drawing by E. E. Vidal in the NMM collection of ‘Ganges’ in a heavy swell off Rio is dated 1827; it appears to have been done on the spot, perhaps when Vidal was a passenger on board.

Vidal is known to have painted a number of pictures of the ‘Ganges’. A pair of his watercolours, one of them of the ‘Ganges’, sold for the astonishing sum of £20,400 in 1982, according to the Daily Telegraph, 6.3.82.