Taking a Northwester: 'The Thermopylae'

Arguably the most illustrious of all the China tea trade clippers, Thermopylae was designed by Bernard Waymouth and built for George Thompson & Co. of London by Walter Hood at Aberdeen in 1868. Registered at 947 tons (net) and measuring 212 feet in length with a 36 foot beam, she was a splendid sea boat, fast in any weather and especially quick when going to windward. As Ron Ranson has noted on a smaller version of this composition, 'This painting is one of the rare deck scenes painted by Dawson, as a record of the life and the breed of men who formed the crew and sailed the clipper ships.' (The Maritime Paintings of Montague Dawson, Newton Abbot, 1993, p. 27).