'Speedy' & 'El Gamo'

Preparatory drawing relating to two (duplicate) prints in the NMM collection, PAH7988 and PAH7989.

Includes an (unrelated) profile of a Portuguese “bean-cod” fishing vessel, top left.

Below the main composition is a small diagram, hard to discern, but which may relate to Pocock’s working out in plan view the two ships’ relative positions.

Inscribed below that (in Pocock’s hand): “Speedy & El Gamo”; (bottom-left, in another, later hand): “[Pocock]”; (bottom-right, in the same hand as the opposite corner): “Speedy & Gamo | 6 Nov 1799”. This date is puzzling, as the incident portrayed took place precisely a year and a half later, on 6 May 1801 (see PAH7988 for a fuller description, along with a reference to a corresponding oil by Pocock), but is perhaps due to nothing more than a clerical error by a later custodian.