Jack got safe into Port with his Prize

Published in 1780 by Robert Sayer and John Bennett, this hand-coloured mezzotint depicts a sailor and a woman engaging in amorous activity on a sofa in a finely decorated room. The sailor leans close to the woman and begins to undress her, tugging at the neckline of her dress and wrapping his arm around her waist. The woman smiles at him and caresses his cheek. Beside them is table, upon which are two glasses and a bottle. A mirror and picture of a man raising a glass hang on the wall behind the couple.

The title, ‘Jack got safe into Port with his Prize’, uses maritime vocabulary to allude to sexual activity. In likening the woman, whom it is implied may be a sex worker, to a ‘prize’ (a captured enemy vessel), this title presents her as a captured object and not as someone with her own agency. This print is a typical representation of sex workers and sailors in print. Such images made light of the harsh realities that sex workers faced in maritime communities, turning their activities into a source of comic titillation.