Liverpool, like Bristol, came to prominence as an eighteenth-century slaving and sugar port but overtook this earlier rival as northern industrialisation made it one of the main beneficiaries of expanding international markets for British manufactured goods. It remained a 'boom town' for most of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The painting displays both technical accuracy and careful delineation, informed by personal experience and intimate knowledge of the sea. This has led to the assumption that Salmon probably supplemented his income as an artist by working in shipping or related industry.

Salmon was born in Whitehaven, Cumberland, where his family probably worked as mariners. He moved to London in the late 1790s and then to Liverpool in 1806. In 1828 he left England for Boston, Massachusetts, where he became a successful painter of marine views. He returned to Europe about 1840 and died between 1848 and 1851, though where is uncertain. The artist has signed the painting with his monogram 'RS' and dated 1809, bottom right.