Бриг «Меркурий», атакованный двумя турецкими кораблями

On the morning of 14 May 1829, in the closing weeks of a war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, a small 18-gun Russian brig called the Mercury found itself boxed in near the Bosphorus by two Turkish ships of the line, one carrying 110 guns, the other 74. By every reasonable expectation it should have been taken. Instead it fought its way clear, and the escape became a set piece of Black Sea legend. Aivazovsky grew up on that coast, in Feodosia, and painted this version in 1892, when he was in his mid-70s and long the most famous marine painter in Russia. He shows the two great hulls rising on either side, cannon smoke rolling off them, and the little brig low in the water between, still under sail.