No. 5 of 36 (PAI0849 - PAI0884).

(Recto) Inscribed top left, 'HMS Monarch / Sheerness, Dec 1850' this was done while Mends was first lieutenant of the 'Trafalgar' at Sheerness. 'Monarch' was a 2nd-rate 84-gun two-decker laid down at Deptford Dockyard but transferred to Chatham in 1825 and launched there in 1832. She is shown here off the Sheerness jetty with what is probably a buoyage tender and/or watering vessel alongside. The steamer under her bows may be a naval picket vessel rather than a civilian passenger craft. The tree on the left is not part of this drawing but overspill from the adjacent page.

(Verso) Three separate studies. On the left one in pencil and brown wash inscribed, 'Formidable Sheerness - Medway / Dec 1850', showing the 84-gun two-decker 'Formidable' at anchor from ahead off the port bow, with another similar ship astern of her. Both are moored on harbour service with the lower masts only indicated in pencil. 'Formidable', which has her anchors hanging a-cockbill and a boat hoisted out on davits, had tremendous longevity. Her frames were captured on the stocks at Genoa in 1814, from which she was completed at Portsmouth in 1825. She was lent as a training ship in 1869 and only sold for breaking in 1906. Top right is a watercolour study of the beakhead and port side focastle of a frigate, with a small sailing boat and a dockyard building with arches at ground level above a stone quay behind, inscribed 'Apollo's bow / from Cabin Port [of the] Trafalgar'. This 38-gun ship had been on harbour service since 1846, presumably at Sheerness when Mends saw her. To the bottom right is an atmospheric landscape watercolour, looking through a gap in trees over a lake or river towards distant hills with the sun setting behind. Wherever this is, if not imaginary, it is neither near Sheerness nor (probably) in south-east England.