County of Edinburgh was a four-masted iron ship built by Barclay, Curle & Co. of Glasgow in 1885. Owned by R. & J. Craig, also of Glasgow, she was registered at 2160 tons gross and measured 285½ feet in length, with a 42½ foot beam. One of her earliest recorded passages (from autumn 1886 - Jan. 1887) was an unofficial race from Cardiff to Bombay loaded with coal was she narrowly beaten by Lock Torridon, the wellknown iron wool clipper. She then turned to the Australian wool trade and also appears to have traded to Java. In 1902 she stranded on Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey, but was successfully refloated without serious damage. Shortly afterwards she was sold to A. Witte of Bremen and renamed Frieds, subsequently passing into Russian ownership before the Great War. In the autumn of 1916, whilst en route from Mobile (Texas) to Greenock with a cargo of timber, she ran ashore on the South Rock, near Cloughey, Co Down, on 7 November and became a total loss.

Harold Sniffen's 'Checklist' of Jacobsen's paintings (pub. 1984) states that the artist painted two versions of this pictures, both copied from a photograph of the stranded ship, the other version being in the collection of the Mariners's Museum, Viginia.