A hand-coloured aquatint of the British Merchantman ‘Governor Ready’ sailing before the wind off Africa’s Gold Coast. In the background is Cape Coast Castle, a large commercial fort and former “slave castle” built by European settlers in the mid-seventeenth century. A local barge approaches, carrying two men in white colonial uniform in the bows and a lady in the stern. Another small barge paddles past them. The calm sea is skimmed by seagulls and the artist’s signature is on a piece of driftwood lower right, a convention borrowed from Dutch seventeenth-century marine painting. The technique includes scratching out, which is a means of embellishing the impression with fine detail, as in the rigging.