This is one of a set of prints of the Royal Dockyards, of which the original paintings by the marine artist Richard Paton, with figures added by John Hamilton Mortimer, are presumed to have been commissioned by George III in the mid-1770s, probably as consequence of the official visits he made to the yards at that time under Lord Sandwich's final tenure (of three) as First Lord of the Admiralty. The paintings are still in the Royal Collection and some of Mortimer's figure studies for them are in the British Museum. Chatham was by that period more important as a shipbuilding and repair yard than an operational one as it had been in the 17th century when the Dutch were a major threat. (Nelson’s ‘Victory’, for example, was completed at Chatham in 1765.) Since then the rising power of France and ease of access to the Atlantic had reinforced the importance of Portsmouth and led in the 1690s to the founding of Plymouth Dockyard.