No. 28 of 74 (PAJ1976 - PAJ2049)

(Updated February 2020). The tightly bound 'queue' suggests this may be an older seaman or ex-seaman. If sketched ashore in mid-1774 it might be Bray's father, John (1716-95), though this is no more than speculation. It has now been clarified that he entered the Navy in 1735, rose from lieutenant in 1743 to captain in 1758 and his two commands in that rank were the 'Princess Amelia' from that year followed by the 'Newark' in 1761. He appears to have been a regulating captain, raising men at Dover, at the start of the French Revolutionary War and he was a superannuated rear-admiral at the time of his death at Deal, where he and his wife Margaret (nee Boughton, m. 1746) are buried. He was a man of some property, living at the Manor House, Great Mongeham, near Deal

It is one of 73 drawings by Bray (plus one signed 'NF 1782') preserved in a 19th-century album. They have now been separately remounted. Bray (1750-1823), was second lieutenant of the 44-gun ‘Pallas’ under Captain the Hon. William Cornwallis (1744-1819) – later a well-known admiral - on two voyages (1774-77) to report on British interests in West Africa, including the slave trade. The dated drawings refer only to the first of these, from December 1774 to September 1775, though a few may be from the second. Others comprise country views, some of Deal, Kent (where Bray may have come from), and others of social-history interest.