How and when he acquired this and other pictures is not clear. The frigate is too fully rigged to be a credible representation of a guardship, and they were anyway usually larger vessels, while it is also far from certain whether the location shown is the Nore ( the junction of the Thames and Medway). There are one or two instances when Stanfield worked on other artists' pictures – for example finishing one by Chambers after the latter's death in 1840 – and while he could have painted much of the sky in this example there is no other evidence for this. The rest of the picture is certainly by another hand. Though ultimately deriving from Dutch seventeenth-century models, the composition and aspects of handling, especially the coast on the right, show greater influence by J. M. W Turner than Stanfield, probably through his 'Liber Studiorum' prints such as that of the now missing 'Leader seapiece' of c.1807–1809 (Butlin & Joll, no. 205), on which the composition may be based. The authorship is a considerable puzzle. Nettlefold had a good collection, of which a well-illustrated catalogue by R. C. Grundy was published in 1933–1938.