File:A naval cutter off the western end of the Menai Strait, North Wales RMG RP5312.jpg

This fully finished watercolour, with a little scratching-out, is signed and dated 1798 in the lower right. It shows a small, unarmed Royal Naval cutter - probably a tender or dispatch vessel - in port-broadside view from abaft the beam, close-hauled on the port tack, in a stiff breeze. At this time Pocock made a tour in Wales and, in the background, the wooded coastline, on the right, can be identified from the three distinctive mountain peaks. These peaks are, left to right, Carnedd Llewellyn (1062 m), Carnedd Dafydd (1044 m) and Snowdon (1085 m). In the distance on the left, under the cutter's bowsprit, a similar vessel can be seen coming out of an inlet, which is the western end of the Menai Strait, with the coast of Anglesey on the far left. Five men are visible on the deck of the cutter, which bears no name, flies the red ensign and the common naval pendant. The colour is bright and largely unfaded, though a little yellowed, and the detailing of rigging and figures excellent. The handling of medium is also fine, especially in the spray thrown up by the passage of the vessel and the tension between its sense of movement, over a well-painted moderate sea and the static coastline behind. Why it might have been done is more of a puzzle. For Pocock it is an unusually large-scale watercolour ship portrait of an essentially minor vessel, one of the 'work-horses' of the fleet. It is large enough to have been an exhibitable piece but does not seem a likely subject for that or for engraving. Therefore one can only speculate that it may have been a record of a vessel, which was put at Pocock's disposal as a well-connected naval artist: or, alternatively, it may have been executed as something for her commander (usually a lieutenant) or someone else connected with the occasion on which he based it. When it was acquired in 2007, from a private owner via Abbott and Holder, it was tacked on a grey, lined backing sheet that may be original. Abbott and Holder had checked the back of the drawing for inscriptions but found none.