A watercolour drawing of the decorated boat known as the Chinese Junk afloat on Virginia Water in Windsor Great Park. Many figures on the river bank admiring the scene, including the Duke of Cumberland standing under a tree at centre.

The brothers Paul and Thomas Sandby worked as draughtsmen to William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, after his return from Scotland and the defeat of the Jacobites at the Battle of Culloden. In the early 1750s the Duke oversaw a programme of redevelopment works in Windsor Great Park, including the creation of an artificial lake at Virginia Water. During these works, the hulk of an old ship was brought to the lake and redecorated as a Chinese Junk, known as the 'Mandarin', painted with dragons and adorned with lanterns. Mrs Delany described the boat as ‘as rich and gay as carving, gilding and japanning can make it’. Other drawings by Sandby of the redecorated hulk are also in the Royal Collection are RCINs 914643, 914644 and 914645. This view also appears in a print of Virginia Water (RCIN 814384) included in Thomas Sandby's Eight Views of Windsor Great Park issued in 1754. Another drawing for the print is in the British Museum (1868,0328.303).

Other drawings by Sandby show the hulk being hauled ashore by oxen at the Bells of Ouseley in Old Windsor, before it was transported to Virginia Water, RCINs 914641, 914642, and a more finished bodycolour version, with crowds of spectators, including the Duke of Cumberland himself, enjoying the spectacle is in the V&A Museum. In September 1768 there was a disastrous flood when the dam that created Virginia Water failed, and it seems that the Yacht was moved back to Great Meadow Pond where it appears in a painting of 1780. By 16 April 1783 it was reported to be derelict and may have sunk there.