(Updated, November 2014) This picture is a composite of two events, set at Deptford, combining the launch of the 'Cambridge', on 21 October 1755 with a view of the 'Royal George', 100 guns, which was in reality launched a year later at Woolwich Dockyard. To the far left is the Deptford Master Shipwright's house built in 1708 and in the background the great storehouse. Deptford was significant as a centre of maritime and naval activity, and at this time its Royal Dockyard, founded under Henry VIII, was primarily a building, repair and victualling yard. The 'Cambridge' was one of the improved 80-gun three-decker third rates and here shown being floated out from the double dry-dock where she was built. The 'Royal George', launched in 1756, lies at anchor to the right. Beyond her stern, two 74-gun two-decker third rates are shown under construction. Thus the artist has brought together details from a number of different events he had witnessed.

The painting shows considerable shipping detail and activities on the quayside, with a variety of small open craft, some clearly bearing official parties. To the left the artist has included a Dutch coastal vessel flying the Dutch flag and there is a gaff-rigged Admiraltyl yacht moored in the centre. A ceremonial barge with trumpeters moves in front of the stern of the 'Royal George' and a Thames lighter, laden with kegs, can be seen to the right, propelled by two watermen standing up and dragging long sweeps through the water. Two figures on the open barge in the centre foreground can be seen waving their hats in celebration. This is one of Cleveley's most impressive dockyard compositions, though also one which he repeated at least three times, on canvases of similar large size but substituting other ships for the 'Royal George'. Two of these - one in the Science Museum, London, and the other at the Yale Center for British Art, replace her with apparently the same smaller Royal Naval warship and are fairly close versions of each other. That in the Science Museum is reported to be dated 1750 (which would make it very early for Cleveley and may not be correct). The third, dated 1763 and in the Government Art Collection, is more unusual in replacing the 'Royal George' with a French ship, 'Les Trois Amis'. This may be connected with the end of the Seven Years War with France and Spain in that year but the scale of the vessel is odd and it may have been subject to alterations, though this remains to be checked. It should also be noted that the Thames at Deptford was probably too shallow ever to have allowed the 'Royal George', at least fully fitted as shown, to have reached the position where Cleveley represents her in this picture, even though he shows her without her guns on board. It is possible she is included as another ship on which he worked as a shipwright, his principal career at Deptford, since the temporary movement of craftsmen between yards was not uncommon. A note published in November 2014 in the 'Mariner's Mirror' (Journal of the Society for Nautical Research, vol. 100, no. 4, pp. 449-53) makes a good although circumstantial case that the picture may have been painted for Captain (later Admiral) Sir Piercy Brett, who briefly commanded both the 'Cambridge', as her first captain in 1755, and then the 'Royal George', also very briefly in 1756.