'Cape Bon, June 6th 1857' (Tunisia) RMG PZ4685

'Cape Bon, June 6th 1857' [Tunisia]
No. 13 in Fanshawe's Baltic and later album, 1843 - 83. Captioned by the artist on the album page below the image, as title. The first of a series of drawings of the Mediterranean fleet's summer cruise, from Malta and back, between 3 June and 7 November 1857. The 'Royal Albert', Mediteranean flagship of Vice-Admiral Lord Lyons, is shown sailing west off Cape Bon into the Bay of Tunis, in a calm early summer evening.
The Cape - now with a lighthouse - is the eastern arm of the Gulf of Tunis. It is also the closest point of Africa to Europe east of Gibraltar, since only about 100 miles of sea (the Sicilian Channel) separates it from south-west Sicily. The ship flies the flag of an Admiral of the Blue: Lyons was in fact only rated temporarily in this rank from December 1857 which suggests Fanshawe either did the drawing some time later or that Lyons had an earlier dispensation to fly blue at the main.

'Cape Bon, June 6th 1857'