Port Mahon, Minorca with British Men-of-War at Anchor

John Thomas Serres, 1759–1825

ca. 1795

Oil on canvas

Yale Center for British Art

A wide view of a harbor with several large sailing ships at anchor. Figures are visible on the rocky shore in the foreground, some carrying bundles of wood. Port Mahon, on the island of Minorca, was the main British naval base in the Mediterranean, first captured in 1708 and made a British possession by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713; a Royal Dockyard was established there in 1715. Port Mahon was lost and recaptured numerous times during the wars of the eighteenth century. John Thomas Serres’s painting shows British ships anchored in the natural harbor during the period of the French Revolutionary Wars known as the First Coalition, in which an uneasy alliance existed between Britain and Spain. The following year, Spain was persuaded to become an ally of France, but in 1798 the British ag