File:Stonage RMG PU8483.tiff

This pen and ink drawing has been thought to depict the people who came to watch the Dutch attack on the Medway in June 1667. Samuel Pepys described the occasion when 'my Lord Douglas and Middleton do ride up and down on single horses, my Lord Brouncker doth go up and down with his hackney coach and six horses at the King's charge'. It is thought that 'Stonage' refers to Stoneness which is on the north bank of the Thames opposite Greenhithe. However, the Dutch did not penetrate this far up the Thames and it is unlikely that this drawing has anything to do with the event. This is reinforced by a lack of any sense of emergency or material evidence such as burning ships or wreckage. It is more likely to be an everyday scene on the Thames estuary. Two upper class men on horseback are looking towards the hull of a ship lying on its side in the shallow water to which one of them points with his whip. The two figures in the right foreground wear the kind of breeches which suggest they are sailors. It is possible that the drawing is by an artist from the Netherlands visiting England in the 1660s rather than by Francis Place who would have been very young at this time.

The drawing is mounted with an article from the 'Observer', dated November 29, 1931, entitled: 'England in the 17th century. Drawings by Francis Place. London Scenes' and some comments by Sir Geoffrey Callender, the first director of the National Maritime Museum.