HMS 'Bombay' was an 84-gun second-rate ship of the line, built (of teak) for the Royal Navy at Bombay Dockyard and launched on 17 February 1828. In 1861, the ship was fitted with auxiliary screw propulsion and in 1864 was on the South American station. On 14 December, while engaged in target practice near the Islas de Flores on the Montevideo (Uruguay) side of the River Plate estuary, a fire started on board of which the cause was never determined. It spread rapidly out of control through the well-ventilated ship, destroying it with the loss of 93 out of its crew of 619. The artist, George Cochrane Kerr was primarily a marine and coastal painter who exhibited fairly regularly at the Society of British Artists from 1873–1874 to 1893, originally from Petersham, Hampshire, then mainly from London addresses to 1888–1889, and finally from Gillingham and then Rochester.