Decks awash in the teeth of a gale

This vivid depiction of the uncompromising harshness of life at sea during the age of sail is one of a small though highly distinctive group of deck scenes executed by Montague Dawson at various times in his career. This particular view of three men on the fo'c'sle (or forecastle deck) of a heaving windjammer has a number of similarities to another Dawson deck scene entitled 'Wind in the Rigging - the Ethiopian', and whilst it is not possible to prove conclusively that the identity of the vessel in the work offered here is that same Ethiopian, it nevertheless seems highly probable. Whether the same or not however, Dawson's masterly treatment of the clouds lit by the golden rays of the setting sun is especially fine and gives the painting a poetic element unusual in this artist's work. Likewise the professional manner in which he paints the rigging, with just the right amount of stress and tension, making this a worthy addition to that rare handful of atmospheric deck scenes which form such a fascinating part of Dawson's oeuvre.
Ethiopian was built for George Thompson's 'White Star Line' of Australian clippers by Walter Hood at Aberdeen in 1864. Registered at 839 tons gross (and net), she measured 195= feet in length with a 34 foot beam and proved unexpectedly fast when she ran out to Melbourne in only 68 days on her maiden voyage. Normally employed to carry coal from Australia to China before loading tea for the journey home, it was said that she was surprisingly beautiful for a collier although it has to be said that her regular run from Melbourne to Shanghai was rather more exotic than the more mundane routes in and around the British Isles. After a successful twenty-two year career under White Star colours, including a miraculous escape from being sunk when completely dismasted in a tremendous gale off Sydney in 1868, she was sold to Norwegian owners in 1886 who operated her until 1894 when she was abandoned in a sinking condition in the North Atlantic.