The Ship “Pomona”

The most important of a group of Liverpool marine painters, Samuel Walters dominated the mid-nineteenth-century market for merchant ship portraits. American ships commanded a large presence at Liverpool’s bustling port, and Walters enjoyed brisk business with American sea captains and merchants.

Built in Boston in 1856, the ship Pomona is under sail flying the American flag in this accomplished portrait of 1858. A year later, however, the Pomona ran aground and sank off the coast of Wales on her way from New York to Liverpool. The captain, together with 423 passengers, perished in a disaster from which only nineteen crew members and three passengers survived in a single boat.