Wreckers -- Coast of Northumberland, with a Steam-Boat Assisting a Ship off Shore

By the 1830s a new thing was appearing off the British coast, the steam-boat, driving out under its own power in weather that would once have doomed a sailing ship. Turner puts one near the centre here, pushing through the surf toward a vessel caught in a storm off Northumberland. On the shore stand the wreckers of the title, local people watching and waiting, ready to gather up whatever cargo the sea gives up. This harvesting of disaster was an old coastal custom, and Turner sets it against the brand-new machine coming to the rescue. Far off, barely there in the haze, stand the broken walls of Dunstanburgh Castle. The whole scene is built from warm ochres and cold grey-blue, the paint loosened until the ship and the weather almost dissolve into each other.