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'The Fighting Temeraire', 1839
Full title: 'The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her Last Berth to be broken up, 1838'
by Turner
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The Temeraire was a famous battleship which played an important part at the Battle of Trafalgar. In 1838, much decayed, it was sold out of the Royal Navy and towed up the River Thames to a breaker's yard. Turner painted 'The Fighting Temeraire' during the eight months following the ship's final journey up the Thames from Sheerness to Rotherhithe in September 1838. There are several stories which claim that Turner witnessed the event and then committed his experience to canvas. The precise details of these stories differ and they are generally thought to be untrue, but they are interesting illustrations of the unreliable nature of people's memories and the way opinion and 'folk memory' differ from historical fact.
One anecdote was included by the journalist Walter Thornbury in his 1862 biography of the artist, 'Life of J.M.W.Turner R.A'. He described how Turner, during an excursion to Greenwich, had seen the ghostly Temeraire being tugged upstream through the evening haze.
Turner depicts the Temeraire with her masts intact and her sails rigged, but before the ship was towed to Rotherhithe her masts had already been removed and she had been stripped of all ornaments such as her figurehead and other carvings.
Tugging such a large ship up a busy stretch of river would have required a great deal of care and planning and would never have been carried out at dusk. Daylight would have been crucial to the smooth and successful completion of the operation. If Turner had witnessed the last journey of the Temeraire, he would certainly not have seen it against a blazing sunset.
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Photo © The National Gallery, London
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