View of bathing beach with bathing machines and lighthouse inscribed ' Ness Point, Teignmouth' (on reverse and inverted)

This graphite drawing is inscribed ‘Ness Point, Teignmouth’ and depicts a busy scene on the Teignmouth coast. Various figures line the beach, including a woman and child paddling in the shallow sea, a figure waist deep in the water next to two bathing machines, and distance cockle-gatherers. On the right, four figures stand on higher ground next to Teignmouth Lighthouse, which was built in 1845. On the right, a vessel with its sails set, is entering or leaving the Teign Estuary, which is overlooked by Ness House, a Georgian manor house that sits on the sloping coastline. The rocky headland, Ness Point, dominates the right of the scene, before a hilly and tree lined background.

This drawing is part of an album containing thirty-six drawings (PAG3476–PAG3511) by Harry Edmund Edgell (1809–1876), dated between 1851 and 1852. During this time, Edgell was living in Torquay, Devon, with his wife Caroline, with whom he had a daughter in June 1852. Edgell entered the Royal Naval College in 1821 and was involved in forcing the passage of the Bocca Tigris in China while serving as Lieutenant on HMS ‘Imogene’ in the 1830s. He became Captain in 1846 and commanded HMS ‘Siren’, in which he assisted in the removal of the sculptured remains of the Tomb of Mausolus (Canning Marbles) from Bodrum Castle, Asia Minor (now Türkiye), to the British Museum. After returning from the Mediterranean in 1847, Edgell did not serve on board a ship again until 1855. This sketchbook primarily contains landscapes and coastal scenes depicting everyday life in and around Devon. Some of the later pages depict places in China and other locations in Asia, suggesting Edgell may have used this album outside of the dates recorded. The final page contains a note in Edgell’s hand, titled ‘India’, recording the details of six ships involved in the Second Anglo-Burmese War, which began in April 1852.