The Fighting Temeraire

In 1838 a warship that had fought at Trafalgar made its last journey up the Thames, towed to a breaker's yard to be taken apart for timber and scrap. The Temeraire had helped save Nelson's flagship in 1805. By the time Turner painted her the following year, she was a pale ghost of a hull, pulled along by a small, dark steam tug spitting fire from its funnel. That contrast is the whole picture. The old ship rises tall and pale against a burning sunset while the sooty little tug does the actual work, the age of sail handed over to the age of steam within a single towline. Turner kept the painting for himself and never sold it, and left it to the nation when he died.