With printed description in same mount. The plate for this print was made by Willmore in 1845. In 1884, writing to Ruskin on the subject, R.C. Leslie (son of C.R. Leslie RA and a nautical authority) recalled: 'I have before me the engraving by Wilmore [sic] of the Téméraire. I think it was [Clarkson] Stanfield who told me that the rigging in this engraving was trimmed up and generally made intelligible to the engraver by some mechanical marine artist or other. I am not sure now who, but I think it was Duncan; whether or no, the rigging is certainly not as Turner painted it, whilst the black funnel of the tug in the engraving is placed abaft her mast or flagpole, instead of before it as in Turner’s picture; his first strong, almost prophetic, idea of smoke, soot, iron and steam, coming to the front of all naval matters, being thus changed and, I venture to think, weakened by this alteration…..’ (repr. in Ruskin 'Works', (Dilecta) [Cook and Wedderburn, ed.], vol. 31, p.576. A drawing by Edward Duncan of 'The Temeraire being towed to Deptford [sic] to be broken up', reproduced in Judy Egerton 'Making and Meaning: The Fighting Temeraire' (National Gallery, 1995, p. 140) may relate to this advice. Duncan's drawing - in fact three sketches - of a ship under tow by two tugs (which was how the 'Temeraire' was indeed taken to the breakers on 5-6 September 1838, not by one) certainly includes one very clear image which might have been the source of this change in the present print, though his second tug has no mast at all. Duncan, like Turner includes masts on the vessel being towed, though Temeraire's were beyond reasonable doubt removed previously: a letter of 1878 from Henry Liggins (a naval amateur) to Sir Charles Eastlake, preserved in the National Gallery file on the matter, says they were removed at Sheerness on 28 August. Turner moved the tug mast aft of the funnel for pictorial reasons, though they were always forward in tugs that had them. [PvdM 2/14]

The old Temeraire