This narrative depicts a collier brig lying aground on a beach in shallow water, at low tide. Coal is being 'whipped' out of her hold in baskets, using the large iron pulley suspended from a jeer or whip footed on her deck, and tipped down a chute over her side into a cart waiting in the water below. The scene shown is a frequent subject in coastal marine art of the late-18th and early 19th centuries, especially in watercolours and drawings. The north-eastern, cat-bark brigs employed in the coal trade were capacious, flat-bottomed and solidly built precisely for the purpose of 'taking the ground' to load and unload in this way, in places without deep-water quay installations.Julius Caesar Ibbetson
