A jib and the mizzen topsail have already been set and the other topsails and fore course are shaking out and filling as she bears away southward in a wind blowing roughly from the north-west, into the picture over the left shoulder of the viewer. Figures on the deck include an officer wearing a blue coat and a tarpaulin hat, standing in the bow with his back to the viewer. A sailor leans over the port side holding a line to a small boat with two men, one of whom may be pulling up its anchor. To its right is a distant pilot cutter, with others apparently among the shipping further right, beating out of the mouth of the River Avon in the wake of two more merchantmen coming down from Bristol. The village of Pill, on the south bank inside the Avon, was the base for the pilots and the sprit-rigged craft on the far right is probably also a pilot boat. The vessels anchored in the centre are Severn trows, the sloop- or ketch-rigged barges which carried cargo from Gloucester and further up the river down to Bristol, and vice-versa.