Photograph showing four Gibraltar policemen or soldiers, two in white, two in dark uniforms, sitting on wall (lower centre) in front of the moat of a 17th or 18th Century fort, overlooked by buildings climbing up mountainside (to upper right); pile of canonballs (lower right).

HMS Bacchante visited Gibraltar on 6-7 October 1879 and 6-15 November 1879.

This is a photograph from one of the nine albums compiled following Prince Albert Victor (1864-92) and Prince George of Wales' (1865-1936) world tour aboard HMS Bacchante from 1879 to 1882. The photographs were collected by their chaperon and tutor, John Neale Dalton.

The majority of the images in these albums are topographical views and architectural studies, loosely arranged according to the group’s itinerary. They include photographs of artefacts, local people and public figures, as well as portraits of the princes taken during the tour. The attempt to recreate the experience of a journey through such an assortment of images is common to many amateur travelling albums of this period. In 1886, some of the photographs in the albums were reproduced as engravings in the published accounts of the voyage, The Cruise of Her Majesty's Ship Bacchante, 1879-1882.