Portrait of H.M. late Ship Sylph off the Gull Light House, Connecticut, N. America

This pencil sketch depicts a port broadside view of the three-masted ship sloop ‘Sylph’ of 18 guns. There is a spit of land with a building and a tower on the right, and the suggestion of another vessel in the distance on the left. Inscribed beneath the image, ‘Portrait of H.M. late Ship Sylph off the Gull Light House, Connecticut, N. America’, and on the reverse with illegible initials and the date, ‘March 27th, 1827’.

The sketch is copied from an engraving published in ‘The Naval Chronicle’, volume 39 (January–June 1818), plate 507 (opposite page 317). The ‘Naval Chronicle’ described the print as being ‘engraved by Baily, from a Drawing by J.C.’.

The ‘Sylph’ was built in Bermuda in 1811–12 and wrecked on Southampton Bar, Long Island, New York, on 17 January 1815 with 115 drowned and only six survivors.

The tower shown on the right is presumably the first lighthouse established on Little Gull Island in Long Island Sound in 1806. It was a 51-foot-high tower, replaced in 1869 by an 81-foot conical tower.