The Privateer 'Virginian' capturing the 'Petit Madelon'

In addition to his paintings which show individual ships at sea, Montague Dawson was also well-known for his paintings depicting famous naval battles, often drawing inspiration from battles of the 18th and 19th centuries, of which he had prodigious knowledge. The naval actions of the French and American Revolutionary Wars, The American Civil War, and the Napoleonic Wars all provided him with subjects for these dramatic and action-packed paintings. Dawson also painted conflicts between privateers and merchant ships which took place during these same eras, showing ships which were specially commissioned by a government to capture merchant ships flagged under nations hostile to that government.
Often, Dawson did not indicate the specific ships in his paintings of privateers, instead giving them more general titles like The Surrender or The Gallant Fight. Here, the artist has identified the ships as the ‘Virginian’ and the ‘Petit Medelon,’ though there do not seem to be historically identifiable ships which bore those names. Though the precise identity of the ships themselves is unknown, they have been painted in the artist’s characteristically exacting style, with even the tension of the ropes in the rigging considered by the artist before setting brush to canvas.