In 1735 Swaine is described as a messenger in a list of clerks and officers employed by the Treasurers of His Majesty's Navy, and so he may have been born in about 1715. He was therefore a close contemporary of Charles Brooking, whose work he sometimes copied, as well as of Dominic Serres. It is not known how he became a marine painter, but he exhibited marine subjects and some landscapes at the Society of Artists between 1762 and 1783. His drawings have a crisp stylised sea, and the shipping and technical detail is accurately portrayed. Here the lugger is 'close-hauled', that is, sailing almost into the wind.