Steamer and Lightship; a study for ‘The Fighting Temeraire’

In September 1838 an old warship made her last trip up the Thames. The Temeraire had fought at Trafalgar in 1805, and now she was a stripped hulk being towed to a yard at Rotherhithe to be broken up for timber. What towed her was the very thing that had made her obsolete, a little steam tug, coal smoke and paddle wheels doing the work sails once did. This is Turner's full-size trial for the finished picture, where he worked out the light and the massing before committing to the final canvas. He bends the facts even here. Moving that dead weight would really have needed two tugs, and he allows the ship just one. For years the study itself was a wreck, holed and mildewed and thought unexhibitable, until conservators cleaned it and hung it beside the famous version it had prepared.