Over life-size marble statue showing the sitter bare-headed and facing forward but with his body turned slightly to his left, his left foot forward and raised on a loose coil of rope, the knee slightly bent. He wears a boat-cloak over full-dress admiral's uniform.

His left hand grips a telescope, supported almost upright on his crooked left knee, his right arm being raised across his body under a fold of his cloak, with his right hand resting loosely on the top end of his telescope. His sword hangs vertically under his cloak to his left and he wears the sash and Order of the Bath, two naval gold medals and the Grand Cross of the Order of the Sword (Sweden).

The coiled rope under his foot falls slightly over the front of the square marble base, with one end over its edge to sitter's left. A short cannon lies behind the figure, muzzle to sitter's right, the rope passing through the breech ring to his rear left. The base is signed, sitter's left side under the rope's end: 'JOHN STEELL R.S.A. / SCULPT. EDINBURGH'. The statue, one of a group of three comprising the last official monuments to naval heroes of the French Wars of 1793-1815, all ordered by Parliament in 1842, was originally installed in the Painted Hall at Greenwich Hospital in December 1853. The other two were of Sir William Sidney Smith and Lord Exmouth. One of Sir William Peel, presented by his brother in 1860, made them a set of four.

Saumarez came from Guernsey and commanded his first ship at the age of 21. He fought under Admiral Sir John Jervis at the Battle of Cape St Vincent in 1797 and with Nelson at the Battle of the Nile in 1798. In 1801, as a rear-admiral, he defeated a Franco-Spanish squadron and later commanded the fleet in the Baltic.