' "Southampton" at the Battle of Jutland' RMG PV2723, William Lionel Wyllie

' "Southampton" at the Battle of Jutland'
Inscribed 'Southampton' by the artist, lower right. This is a preliminary study for a finished watercolour, with the title quoted above, reproduced in Wyllie's co-authored book 'More Sea Fights of the Great War' (1919), f. p. 120, as the fourth in his sequence there on the Battle of Jutland, 31 May 1916. It shows a German salvo falling short of HMS 'Southampton', a four-stacker 'Chatham'-class protected cruiser, though the ship (seen from her starboard side) is not depicted very accurately. The 'Chatham', 'Bristol', 'Weymouth' and 'Birmingham' classes of 2nd-class protected cruisers had four raked funnels, with the first and fourth being noticeably thinner than the other two in the middle. Also, the 'Chatham' class did not have a raised superstructure at the base of the mainmast, and this drawing is more like a 'Drake'-class armoured cruiser. The splashes of shots falling short are also too closely grouped together to be natural - which is also true of the finished version- but it is still a highly effective piece and the technical looseness explained by its being a preliminary one only, to calculate general effect. Two other ships were included in the left distance in the finished version.