Hand-coloured. Plate 2 from Dodd's 'Seaport' set, see below. Inscribed: 'Painted by Robert Dodd. Plate 2d. of a Collection of the Seaports & of the River Thames. / To the King's most excellent Majesty This View of the River & Shipping at Limehouse / By His most gracious Permission-Is with all Humility Inscribed By His Majesty's Dutiful and Loyal Subjects. / Dodd Woodfall & Freeman / Published under the Patronage of the King June 4th. 1793 by Freeman & Co. Printsellers to his Majesty No.95 Strand.' Includes detail of a cargo vessel, merchantman 'Ann Gordon' ca. 1793. The windmill is one of two at Limehouse Hole with a further eight along Millwall used for crushing oilseed.

Dodd did two series of seaport and dockyard prints, easily confused in image terms. The early and slightly smaller unnumbered Royal Dockyard set was published by Boydell, comprising Blackwall (not a Royal yard but see below) and Deptford (PAH9746) on 25 March 1789; Woolwich, October 1789 (PAH9725); Portsmouth, 1790 (PAH9742); Plymouth, 1790 (PAH9767) and Chatham, 1798 (PAH9714). The larger numbered ones in a series called 'a Collection of the Sea Ports & of the River Thames' were published by Freeman on 4 June 1793: no.1 Greenwich (PAI7098), no. 2 Limehouse (PAI7128), no. 3 a view of the river and shipping near the Tower of London, and no. 4 Dover (PAI7087).

While Blackwall was a civilian yard, it built many navy ships and Dodd's view of it (PAH9724), published with that of Deptford in March 1789, shows the launch of the 74-gun 'Bombay Castle', a warship built for the Navy as a gift of the East India Company. This is presumably why it was included in the otherwise strictly naval dockyard group. Given they were the initial pair, there may also have been an element of testing the commercial water before doing the others. (NMM neg. no. 3481; note that acquisition number does not tie up to details in NMM12/13, Prints & Drawings Register of acquisitions for 1937.) [PvdM 10/05, amended 1/16]