English: (Recto) Scene at Teignmouth, with a figure looking out to sea leaning up against a beacon; (Verso) a rugged landscape with a waterfall and pencil sketches of a figure sitting by boulders and a three-decker flagship

No. 4 of 36 (PAI0849 - PAI0884).

(Recto) This drawing shows a view across the beach at Teignmouth looking east towards Holcombe Point (just left of the beacon). It is inscribed and dated by the artist, lower right.

Teignmouth had become an increasingly genteel watering place in the early 19th-century, partly because it was a pleasant and temperate place where naval officers' families could stay in the hope that they might see husbands and fathers involved in the blockade of Brest, during the French wars to 1815. For in bad weather, the Channel fleet sometimes took shelter in Torbay, just to the west, off Brixham. The small town developed to accommodate such visitors; a few naval men retired there and the marine artist Thomas Luny, in particular, found no difficulty in living, working and selling his work from there with great success for about 30 years from about 1807. Mends presumably did this drawing (and those on the preceding page, PAI0851) while on leave or half-pay, just before receiving his commission to join the 'Trafalgar' at Sheerness, as her first lieutenant. It is possible that his family lived in the area, though this remains to be ascertained.

(Verso) In the top left corner of the sheet, a composed watercolour of a waterfall descending beside a rocky tor into what is probably a lake, in a rugged landscape. The lower and right margins contain rubbed pencil sketches of a figure sitting in back view on one of several boulders, and a starboard-broadside view of a three-decker ship of the line under sail, flying the flag of an admiral at the main.

Rugged landscape with a waterfall and pencil sketches of a figure sitting by boulders and a three-decker flagship