A '74' and a frigate in a stiff breeze in the Channel, with coastal craft and other shipping beyond

Sir Bruce Ingram, managing editor of the Illustrated London News (and grandson of its founder), was also the assembler of one of the most important of all twentieth-century collections of maritime painting, including a remarkable group of seventeenth-century Netherlandish seascapes centering on the work of Willem van de Velde the Elder and his son, the Younger. A 'passionate advocate' of Britain's maritime heritage and character, Ingram championed the need for a National Maritime Museum in the years leading up to that institution's foundation, devoting extensive space to the issue in the ILN, and presented part of his collection to the Museum, making 'a notable gift to the nation'.

This proved to be one of Brooking's most appealing compositions, a variant of which is illustrated on the cover of both the 1966 exhibition catalogue and the catalogue raisonné (op. cit., no. 232E).