Mollineux (also spelled Molyneux) seems to have been a marine and topographical painter who worked for the 10th Earl of Derby at Knowsley in 1722-8. This subject of this panorama can be identified from a print after it and another version at Knowsley: the Dutch and English are anchored off Spithead in 1729 during the Anglo-Spanish War of 1727-9. In the centre, the "Cornwall" fires a salvo; smoke surrounds a Manx man-of-war in the middle of the smaller vessels to the right. Larger ships are interspersed with small rowing boats plying their way between them.