The "Southampton" with British and Dutch ships in Table Bay, Cape of Good Hope

The ship either HMS Southampton, a distinguished Royal Navy thirty-two gun 5th rate frigate, or the East Indiaman Southampton which was recorded at the Cape in 1780 when King brought Cook's ships Resolution and Discovery back from the Pacific. The topography of the land (Devil's Peak, Table Mountain and the Lion's Head) follows George Lambert's view in Samuel Scott and Lambert's picture of Table Bay (c.1730) commissioned by the English East India Company for their courtroom in Leadenhall Street, the picture now in the Castle of Good Hope (William Fehr Collection, Iziko Museums of South Africa), Cape Town. Lambert's landscape itself derives from Aernout Smit's 'View of Table Bay' c.1679 (also at the Castle), Smit working up his view from early plans and drawings.
The list of Robert Dodd's pictures exhibited at the Royal Academy includes a 'View of the Cape of Good Hope, with an East Indiaman coming to anchor in Table Bay', one of four pictures of East Indiamen, all of similar size to the present picture, exhibited by Dodd in 1787 (the Cape picture no.380). The latter is probably the picture by Robert Dodd dated 1787 (now at the Castle, Cape Town) which was engraved by Dodd in 1788 and published as one of a pair of Cape views ('British East Indiaman anchoring in Table Bay, Cape of Good Hope', and 'Indiaman rounding Cape') by Sayer in 1793.