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When Turner died in 1851, the house on Queen Anne Street where he showed his work also held rooms of canvases nobody had seen. A great many of them were beginnings, laid in and then left. This marine is one of those. The water and the hulls are blocked out and the detail never came. Tate dates it to about 1825 to 1830 and still prints a question mark after the date, because there is no exhibition record, no buyer and no commission to fix it by. The gallery catalogues it simply as Shipping, which is a description of what is on the panel rather than a title Turner ever gave it.