THE FIGHTING TEMERAIRE TUGGED TO HER LAST BERTH TO BE BROKEN UP, 1838, 1839 - JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER (1775-1851) This is the last journey of the Fighting Temeraire, a celebrated gunship which had fought valiantly in Lord Nelson"s fleet at the battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Thirty-three years later, decaying and no longer in use, she was towed up the Thames to be broken up in a Rotherhithe shipyard. A fiercely patriotic artist, Turner wanted to pay tribute to her heroic past, using artistic licence to communicate particular messages. The glorious sunset is a fanfare of colour in her honour. He used recently developed pigments including lemon yellow and bright iodine scarlet, laid on in slabs of pure colour. The sunset can also be seen as a symbol of the end of an era, as the age of elegant, tall-masted warships draws to a close. The "Temeraire" is already a ghostly shape, fading away behind the solid form of the squat little steam tug that pulls her along to her fate.