SS Indiana (1873) was built on the Delaware River, Philadelphia. One of the first ships to be fitted with a compound steam engine, she conducted transatlantic crossings for twenty-four years of her thirty-six-year career, including five crossings from Liverpool to Philadelphia in the year in which this work was painted. The most notable of her journeys was her transportation of the former United States President Ulysses S. Grant to Liverpool on the first leg of his 1877-78 world tour. This work was sketched 'en plein air' on board a ship and is a fascinating historical document of iceberg sightings during a transatlantic crossing in the late-nineteenth century.