Peter Pett and the Sovereign of the Seas by Sir Peter Lely, c. 1645–50. Repro ID: BHC2949 ©National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, Caird CollectionThe year 2003 marked the 300th anniversary of the death of Samuel Pepys (1633–1703). He is often regarded as the founder of the modern Royal Navy because of his pioneering reforms of naval administration.

Pepys was born four years before completion of the Sovereign of the Seas in 1637. This was the prototype of the 100-gun, first-rate warship. It is shown in Lely's portrait of Peter Pett and was the most ambitious and ostentatious monument to Charles I’s expansion of his navy.

Dutch Attack on the Medway, June 1667 by Pieter Cornelisz van Soest, circa 1667. Repro ID: BHC0295. ©National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, LondonPepys came to prominence through his cousin, the Earl of Sandwich, rising to become Secretary of the Admiralty in 1686. His famous diary, with its vivid depiction of life in Restoration London, was only kept between 1660 and 1669, the very first years of his long naval career.

The painting depicts the Dutch attack on the Medway in 1667, one of the events of the Second Dutch War, with which Pepys was involved.