Exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1865, Danby’s expansive coastal landscape offers an idyllic vision of rural labour in Victorian Britain. It suggests unchanging life and values, balancing the group of family workers in the foreground with the traditional craft of shipbuilding in the distance, both of which are seen to be in harmony with the natural beauty of the surrounding countryside and sea. The title suggests that this local – but also implicitly national – relationship with the sea is also a natural and familial one.