Dominic Serres - The 'Royal George' and other Vessels RMG BHC3604

The 'Royal George' and other Vessels
(Updated, August 2014) This 100-gun First-Rate was launched at Woolwich Dockyard in 1756. It was the first to be built in the 18th century without a poop-royal which was a short deck above the after end of the poop where the master or pilot had his cabin. King George III visited the 'Royal George' at Portsmouth while it was under construction, and she was Sir Edward Hawke's flagship at the Battle of Quiberon Bay in 1759, when the French fleet under Admiral de Conflans was largely destroyed and a threatened French invasion plan averted. This was regarded as an heroic action since the battle took place during a gale among the treacherous shoals and rocks off the Brittany coast.
The 'Royal George' continued as Hawke's flagship for the rest of the Seven Years War and is here shown off the Needles at the western end Isle of Wight. In the War of American independence she did not join the Channel fleet until 1779 as the flagship of Rear-Admiral Sir John Ross and in 1782 of Rear-Admiral Richard Kempenfelt.
On the morning of 29 August 1782 while lying at Spithead, the ship was listed slightly to port, the guns being run out on that side so that the carpenter could make a repair on the starboard side at the waterline. At the same time, a hoy came along the port side to deliver stores. The weight of the stores increased the list to port to the point where water began to come in over the sills of the lower deck gun ports. The ship then rapidly filled and sank with the loss of about 900 lives, many being women and children. Kempenfelt also perished. It was the scandal of the age and was commemorated in a well-known poem by William Cowper ('Toll for the Brave/The Brave that are no more/All sunk beneath the wave/Fast by their native shore').
The 'Royal George' is shown in starboard broadside view flying the blue ensign and the flag of an Admiral of the Blue at the main. Other shipping is shown on the left together with a small yacht to the right. The ship is moving up the Channel and the white cliffs of the south coast are shown in the background. A small craft sails in front of the ship, with several people on board.
The Frenchman Serres's early paintings show the influence of Brooking and Monamy's interpretations of Dutch art, but he rapidly achieved recognition for his more documentary visual accounts of sea actions of the Seven Years War, 1755-63, becoming established as England's leading marine painter. His work was even more in demand in the 1770s and 1780s when there was a market for paintings recording the naval history of the American War of Independence. In 1768 Serres was a founder member of the Royal Academy and at the end of his life, its librarian. A well respected and sociable man, he was appointed Marine Painter to George III in 1780. The painting is signed D. Serres and dated 1778.

The 'St. George' and other Vessels