The Fighting Temeraire

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One of the most popular paintings in the history of British art is "The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken" by J. M. W.  Turner, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1839, just two years after Queen  Victoria succeeded to the throne.  It is the begining of the Victorian   age, and this painting speaks of an age of transition, a time when the old  gives way to the new. HMS Temeraire, a huge timber warship of the age of  sail and hero of the Battle of Trafalgar, is towed to its graveyard at Rotherhithe  by a steam powered tug, belching smoke and flame, symbol of the new industrial  age. 

Apart from the symbolism of the event, it was at the time the largest  ship to have been tugged so far up the Thames. Moreover, Turner's use of the word tugged as a verb is the first known use of the word in the english  language. Tug boats existed, but to be tugged was new.

The destination was Beatson's Yard at Rotherhithe, a place that became  well known for ship breaking during the nineteenth century when the life  of the old timber-built hulks was coming to an end.

HMS Temeraire was moved from Sherness to Rotherhithe between the 5th  and 6th September 1838, the year before Turner displayed his painting at  the Royal Academy. 

The timeline for the moving of the ship from Sherness to its final berth in Rotherhithe is well known.  It set off at 7.30am on 5 September 1838. At 1.30pm arrived at Greenhithe, where it anchored overnight. Then,  at 8.30 on the morning of 6 September it set off from Greenhithe, arriving at Greenwich at noon. By 2.00pm on 6 September the ship arrived at Beatson's   Yard at Rotherhithe. 

It has long been accepted that Turner's painting is an imaginative interpretation  of the actual event. Indeed, there is no evidence at all that he witnessed the ship being tugged to its last berth at Rotherhithe, or that he stood anywhere on the banks of the Thames to draw the scene from life.  In  particular, it has been pointed out that the sun sets in the west but the ship in the painting is clearly moving east, away from the sunset. The journey up the Thames taken by HMS Temeraire is a westward journey, apart from the meanders of the river around the Isle Of Dogs, meaning that the ship should  be moving towards the sunset, not away from it as depicted in the painting.

This analysis of the ship's movement is basically correct, but it does  ignore one practical problem.  Existing illustrations of the ship beached  at Rotherhithe show it pointing east, which means it would have to have  been turned around from its westward journey and beached at Rotherhithe   pointing back towards the east.  Turner's painting could well depict  the ship in the process of being turned.

Here is an illustration of the ship beached at Rotherhithe.  This  view is from the north side of the Thames, looking south, so the front of  the ship is clearly pointing east.

Turner's depiction of a sunset is excellent, as would be expected from  an artist who spent a lifetime studying the moods of the sky and the movements  of the sun and moon over wide views of land, rivers and sea.  The relationship between the sun and moon he depicts in this painting is accurate in that  as the sun sets in the west it would often be  followed by a waxing  crescent moon, seen at the top left of the painting. Both bodies, sun and moon, would appear to be moving slowly downwards and to the right at an angle determined by the tilt of the earth on its axis (23.45 degrees) and  by the latitude of the location (london) and by the time of year as the earth moves around the sun. 

However, this does not match the time and date of the event.  When  HMS Temaraire was towed towards Rotherhithe on 6th September 1838 the sun  set at 18.35pm.  The setting sun in the painting is approximately twenty  minutes before actual sunset, which is defined as the moment when the trailing edge of the sun disappears below the horizon.  The time therefore can  be estimated as 18.05pm.

Although we are told that the ship arrived at Rotherhithe at about 2.00pm,  the low setting sun in the painting suggests a later time of about 6.05pm,  which in turn suggests Turner is using artistic licence for the sake of  mood, the melancoly end of day mood. 

Just before sunset on 6 September 1838, as depicted by Turner, the sun  was at an angle of 276° West, which is close to due West (290°).  Using this as a starting point, we can estimate that the viewer of the painting,  looking towards the centre of the painting, is looking almost directly South-West  and would, therefore, have to be on the north bank of the Thames.

Although it is not possible to exactly derive three dimensional geometry  from a two dimensional painting, the diagram below, based on the position  of the sun at 276° West, gives a sense of the orientation of the view  Turner depicts.

Notice that the ship is being tugged almost directly North and is aiming  towards a mooring buoy off the North shore.  The buoy is a dark, ugly,  gloomy thing, not a happy destination.  I feel the symbolism of it  as a dark, weak, miserable end is more important than the literal direction   of the ship.

Also, if the sunset is related to the phase of the Moon, then another problem arises.  Turner shows the Moon high in the sky and at approximately  220° South-West.  But at this date and time, 18:05 on 6th September  1838, the moon was not a waxing crescent moon as depicted in the painting,   but was a waning gibbous moon, almost a full moon, and was below the North-East  horizon and not visible in the sky.  In fact, it was at an angle of 61° North-East and at an  altitude of -12°, that is, it was almost  directly behind the viewer and 12° below the horizon.

The diagrams below show the position of the sun and moon at the date  and approximate time the sunset in the painting suggests. 

In each diagram the straight line through the center marked 0° represents  the horizon, and the curved line shows the course of each body during the course of the day as it moves from below to above the horizon.

The first diagram shows the position of the sun as it appears in the painting. It would have been approximately 18.05 in the evening, half an  hour before sunset, which happened at 18.35 on 6th September 1838.

 The second diagram shows where the moon would have been at 18.05 on 6th September 1838. At that time and date the moon would have been below the horizon and so not visible in the sky. It did not rise till 19.22, almost  an hour after sunset. 

 It would appear, therefore, that on 6th September 1838 the moon was in  a different phase and in a different position in the sky - it would have  been a waning gibbous moon, as shown in the photo below, and would not have  been visible in the sky until an hour after sunset. 

This confirms that Turner's painting is an imaginative interpretation  of reality. While it gives a true picture of the relationship between the  sun and the moon over the Thames, and captures the mood and context of an  historical event, it does not try to recreate the exact conditions on the   day the event happened.

Further reading:

http://russiadock.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/the-beatsons-ship-breaking-family-in.html