A bow view of a full-rigged (three-masted) ship in light weather conditions, possibly seen against a sunset and perhaps derived from a photographic image. The artist's style has the appearance of being amateur rather than professional and the drawing is among material from the collection of Basil Lubbock (1876-1944), whose many books on the history of 19th-century sailing vessels were very influential in the early days of that field. The ship has 'painted ports' decoration and apparently iron or steel construction from general appearance, suggesting a black upper hull above the painted-port line and grey below, which in turn suggests that rather than 'Benares', it may in fact be the 'City of Benares'. This was a full-rigged iron ship of 1574 tons gross built by Barclay Curle at Glasgow for the Ellerman line, Liverpool, in 1882 (official no. 86696). In 1900 they sold her into Finnish ownership and she was wrecked in a gale at West Kapelle near Flushing (Netherlands) while sailing from Galway to Sundswall, in ballast, with loss of nine lives. A British 'Benares' (official no. 47385) did exist but was a smaller wooden ship of 882 gross registered tons: no image of it has so far been located. [PvdM 4/15]