Spithead: Two Captured Danish Ships Entering Portsmouth Harbour

In the autumn of 1807 a British fleet bombarded Copenhagen for three nights and carried off the Danish navy, a pre-emptive strike to keep those ships out of Napoleon's hands. Denmark was neutral, and at home the raid was as much an embarrassment as a triumph. Turner had gone down to the coast and watched two of the captured Danish warships being brought in past Spithead, the great anchorage off Portsmouth, and he built this large canvas around what he saw. By the time he showed it in his own gallery in 1809 he had quietly renamed it, dropping the Danish ships from the title and calling it a scene of a boat's crew recovering an anchor. In the foreground that is exactly what a small working boat is doing, its crew hauling at the water while the tall hulls ride behind them in the grey light of the Solent.