One of Turner's rare night scenes, perhaps to be seen, in view of its unusually large size for this kind of subject, as a companion to the glowingly daylight scene of ‘Yacht approaching the Coast' (No.494). The figures on the shore and the skeletal fragments of the wrecked ship are not dissimilar to those in 'Wreckers - Coast of Northumberland', exhibited in 1834 (private collection, U.S.A.), but the drama of the great wave crashing over the wreck in the centre is much greater.