The East Indiaman William Pitt, in three positions off Dover

The William Pitt was owned by Sir Robert Preston, and her Captain was Charles Mitchell who was later knighted and in whose family the present painting descended for almost two centuries. She sailed on her first voyage from the Downs on 26 March 1786, returning in May the following year. She made six voyages in total for the British East India Company, always under the same owner and captain; during her fourth she served as an ad hoc warship in a naval campaign and saw action. She was eventually sold for breaking up in 1809.

Here the William Pitt is shown in three positions off Dover. Ships bound for the Atlantic Ocean and the West and East Indies had to negotiate the busy Narrows (the Straits of Dover), winds permitting. In the left background the ship, sailing up Channel, fires a gun and hoists the Union flag at the fore topgallant masthead to request a Pilot, who is seen setting off in a lugger to the right of the William Pitt. In the centre the ship is shown in profile, hove-to (with sails backed to take the way off the ship) and hauling down the Union as the Pilot comes on board from his lugger alongside. At the right the Indiaman stands away for the Downs and the hazards of the Forelands, Goodwin Sands and the Thames Estuary.

Robert Dodd was one of the principal recorders of naval actions in the American War of Independence and the French Revolutionary Wars, and was meticulously accurate in his depictions of ships. Alongside exhibitions at the Royal Academy and the Society of Artists, many of his paintings were engraved and published in aquatint, further widening the audience for his work.