This battle was fought between the French and the British in the Atlantic, about 430 miles west of the Breton island of Ushant, and arose out of an attempt by the British fleet under Howe to intercept a French grain convoy from the United States. Although the convoy escaped, the ensuing battle was technically a British victory.

Painted over 30 years after the event this is an imaginary construction incorporating a collection of recognisable portraits, many of whom were by then dead. It is one of four naval subjects for which the British Institution paid £500 each, to encourage British historical painting, all exhibited there before their presentation to the Naval Gallery at Greenwich Hospital.

Briggs, a fashionable portraitist at the time, included people he knew as models in this picture. The small boy in red, top left, is Frederick Locker (later Locker-Lampson and known as a poet), who mentioned sitting to him for this in his own memoirs. Based on the grouping and likeness the man in brown to his right, leaning over the rail, is his father Edward Hawke Locker, senior Commissioner of the Hospital, and the key figure in founding the Naval Gallery for which this work was painted.