Edward Gennys Fanshawe, Europa Point, Gibraltar, Augt 29th 1857

'Europa Point, Gibraltar, Augt 29th 1857'. No. 21 in Fanshawe's Baltic and later album, 1843 - 83. Captioned by the artist on the album page below the image, as title. The eighth of a series of drawings of the Mediterranean fleet's summer cruise, from Malta and back, between 3 June and 7 November 1857. A view of Gibraltar from the south-west, with Alceciras bay just visible above the lighthouse on Europa Point on the left, and a British three-decker flying the flag of an Admiral of the Blue passing into the western Mediterranean. This is the 'Royal Albert', Mediterranean flagship of Vice-Admiral Lord Lyons, who may have had a dispensation to fly his colour at the main though only temporarily rated Admiral from December 1857. The squadron was on its way back from a brief call at Gibraltar to Port Mahon via Algiers, where it arrived on 3 September (Fanshawe [1904] p 353). The lateen-rigged xebec or similar vessel in the foreground is flying Spanish colours. On 27 November, Fanshawe told his father he had made another vesrion of this drawing for his mother and sent it home, as a substitute for one she had asked for of the Alhambra, Granada, which he could not visit (ibid. p 356).