The most glowing and colourful of Turner's sea pictures, with an audacious use of pure reds unmatched in any other picture. The fragmented surface is unified by the overall vortex which radiates from and embodies the main source of light in the picture. The rather unusual size is a reversion to that of 'Dorchester Mead' and 'Ploughing up Turnips, Slough', two pictures of 1809-10, and was also used for 'Stormy Sea with Blazing Wreck', to which this picture is perhaps the counterpart, light against dark.