Huggins painted ships for the East India Company in Bombay and China before returning to England around 1817; he was appointed Marine Painter to William IV who commissioned these three scenes of the Battle of Trafalgar (RCIN 407180, 406793 and 406187). Huggins received £90 for the last of the series on 25 July 1835. Two scenes (RCIN 407180 and 406187) were exhibited at Exeter Hall in the Strand in the Spring of 1834.

The circumstances depicted in this first scene are described on an engraving after the picture published in March 1837 by Edward Duncan (1808-82). Soon after mid-day on the 25 October 1805, in the thick of battle, the ‘Victory’, centre, its sunlit sails holed, ploughs to the right foreground between two French ships, the ‘Redoutable’, appropriately in shadow to the left, and ‘Bucentaure’. The other ships receding to the rear on either side all belong to the enemy, Spanish or French. This therefore provides an image of the ‘Victory’ apparently surrounded by enemy ships, breaking through alone. This is also a significant moment in the battle as Nelson was fatally wounded by a sniper shooting from the mizentop of the ‘Redoutable’ at 1.15pm.

This painting is described very enthusiastically by an imaginary Greenwich pensioner in ‘Tough Yarns’ of 1835 by Matthew Henry Barker (1790-1846), who signed himself ‘The Old Sailor’. The tar describes the way in which Huggins has shown the ‘Victory hugging the enemy just as a bear would a baby’.