Painting - 'Defeat of the Floating Batteries at Gibraltar' 1782 by John Singleton Copley

This painting is based on an attack that took place in Gibraltar, 1782.

It was an unsuccessful attempt by Spain and France to capture Gibraltar from the British. 

Secret Spanish weapons, known as floating batteries (wooden timbers filled with layers of wet sand) were thought to be fireproof. The British used furnace-temperature heated cannonballs, nicknamed 'hot potatoes' to fire at the advancing ships, causing them to smoulder and burn.

This is the largest and most dramatic painting in the Guildhall Art Gallery, measuring 7.6 m by 5.6 m

and is one of Britains largest oil paintings. No wall was large enough to display it and it can now be seen on the entire back wall of the main exhibition space at the gallery which was built to house it. 

It was stored out of London during the Blitz, three weeks before the gallery was destroyed.