(Updated, October 2023) This 100-gun first-rate was launched at Woolwich Dockyard in 1756. It was the first to be built in the 18th century without a poop-royal which was a short deck above the after end of the poop where the master or pilot had his cabin. King George III visited the 'Royal George' at Portsmouth while it was fitting and it was Sir Edward Hawke's flagship at the Battle of Quiberon Bay on 20 November 1759, when the French fleet under Admiral de Conflans was largely destroyed and a threatened French invasion plan averted. The battle was remarkable in taking place in heavy weather into a dark November evening close in among the rocks and shoals of the southern Brittany coast. Two British ships were wrecked, with even greater French losses overall and the victory capped others, both by land and sea, that made 1759 the so-called 'Year of Victories' in Britain.

The 'Royal George' continued as Hawke's flagship for the rest of the Seven Years War (1756-63) and while this painting is now called 'The 'Royal George' and other vessels', it may be the one that Serres exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1779 (no. 296) titled 'The Royal George bringing a French 74-gun ship into St Helen's'. That was, at least, the published opinion of Alan Russett, the most recent specialist on the artist but it is open to objections. The ship immediately behind is certainly a two-decker of the right size, but it is not clear whether its blue ensign at the stern is flying over the white Bourbon flag of France. The coastline behind also appears to be a directly eastward view of the Needles, at the western end of Isle of Wight, which suggests the three ships are sailing west out of the Solent, not into St Helen's Roads on the north-eastern side of the island.

Whether it is the painting he exhibited at the RA in the spring of 1779 or not, the 'Royal George' did not join the Channel fleet until April that year after France had allied with the American rebels in their war of Independence, and following refit at Portsmouth under a series of commanders. Serres's composition here, showing it flying the flag and blue ensign of an Admiral of the Blue (possibly Hawke), is therefore likely to hark back to the Seven Years War, rather than later.

On the morning of 29 August 1782 while lying at Spithead as flagship of Rear-Admiral Richard Kempenfelt, the 'Royal George' was listed slightly to port, the guns being run out on that side so that the carpenter could make a repair on the starboard side at the waterline. At the same time, a hoy came along the port side to deliver stores. The weight of the stores increased the list to port to the point where water began to come in over the sills of the lower-deck gun ports. The ship then rapidly filled and sank with the loss of about 900 lives, many being women and children. Kempenfelt also perished. It was the scandal of the age and was commemorated in a well-known poem by William Cowper ('Toll for the Brave / The Brave that are no more / All sunk beneath the wave / Fast by their native shore').


The Frenchman Serres's early paintings show the influence of Brooking and Monamy's interpretations of Dutch art, but he rapidly achieved recognition for his more documentary visual accounts of sea actions of the Seven Years War and War of American Independence, 1775-83. By the time of the latter he was Britain's leading marine painter, the only one made a founder member of the Royal Academy in 1768 and its Librarian at the end of his life. A well-respected and sociable man, he was also admired and patronised by George III, to whom he was appointed Marine Painter in 1780.


The painting is signed D. Serres and dated 1778. In 1806 it - or at least the same image - was reproduced as a print by Edward Orme as Plate 28 in the 'Liber Nauticus' then put together by John Thomas Serres, Dominic's son, partly using his father's work. The print title only identifies the 'Royal George', without further information.