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This portrait depicts Vice-Admiral Sir Samuel Cornish (c.1715–1770), seated on the right, issuing orders to his flag captain Richard Kempenfelt (1718–1782), standing on the left. Cornish’s secretary, Thomas Parry (1732–1816), sits between the two officers, his quill poised over a stack of papers. The painting is the only known portrait of Admiral Cornish. The setting is the admiral’s cabin in the 'Norfolk' – the ship in which the three men served in the East Indies in 1762. The painting commemorates their involvement in the capture of Manila, a significant Spanish trading base, in late September and early October that year, during the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763). Although the Spanish government ultimately refused to pay the four-million-dollar ransom to which the city’s governor had originally agreed, the British forces nevertheless derived immense sums in prize money from the action, thanks in no small part to the capture of two Spanish treasure ships, the 'Santisima Trinidad' and the 'Filipina.