Tunis Bay, site of Carthage, June 10th 1857 [Tunisia]

Mounted in album with PAI4673-PAI4685, PAI4687-PAI4716.; No.14. No. 14 in Fanshawe's Baltic and later album, 1843-1883. Captioned by the artist on the album page below the image, as title. The second of a series of drawings of the Mediterranean fleet's summer cruise, from Malta and back, between 3 June and 7 November 1857. A small white mosque on the coast, against the mountains of north Africa, with figures, presumably close to the city of Tunis itself within the Gulf of Tunis. Tunis occupies the site of ancient Carthage but that city was so effectively destroyed by the Romans, and the port area partly drowned by sea-level change, that it was only beginning to be investigated at this time. Fanshawe and the squadron under Admiral Lord Lyons spent two days there and wrote to his father: ' one day we devoted to Tunis, which is a vile specimen of an Oriental town, a maximum of filth and a minimum of the "Arabian Nights". The next day we went about the ruins of Carthage - I say we because we went in a flock with the Admiral - with a Mr Davis, who is employed by Government [ie the British] to search for antiquities. He has dug up eight tons of tessellated pavement, which is stowed on board the "Curacao", and she has now gone for another instalment on her way to England.' (Fanshawe [1904] p 351).
Edward Gennys Fanshawe

Original size: 127 mm x 179 mm