Julius Caesar Ibbetson (Leeds 1759-1817 Masham, Yorkshire)

Another version of this work, painted in 1802 and dedicated to the 'Sailor Prince', later King William IV (1765-1837), can be found in the National Maritime Museum, London, described in Rotha Mary Clay's bipography of Ibbetson (London, 1948, p.48).
The painting is thought to be a retrospective celebration of the Battle of the Glorious First of June 1794 as it relates to an earlier watercolour by Ibbetson of a similar scene, dated July 1794. Many inns, such as that depicted in the present work, had 'long rooms', a phrase to describe their largest public space. Among the sailors carousing can be seen a seaman in the opening to the left with a boatswain's whistle, carried aloft on a chair. There is a group of three sailors in the centre left foreground pretending to 'fry' their watches, a game deriving from a celebrated incident in 1762 when, after capturing a Spanish galleon, seamen were so loaded with plunder they were recorded as frying watches.