"A young wife kneels in despair beside her old mother, who has been trying to comfort her during the long watches of a tempestuous night. A Bible lies open before them. Through the cottage window is seen a raging sea by the light of a cheerless dawn breaking through a stormy sky. On the window-sill a candle that has burnt all night as a beacon has just flickered out." – Descriptive and historical catalogue of the pictures and sculpture in the National Gallery, British art, 1907.

Exhibited at the Royal Academy 1888 with the following quotation from John Ruskin:

"Human effort and sorrow going on perpetually from age to age; waves rolling for ever and winds moaning, and faithful hearts wasting and sickening for ever, and brave lives dashed away about the rattling beach like weeds for ever; and still, at the helm of every lonely boat, through starless night and hopeless dawn, His hand, who spreads the fisher's net over the dust of the Sidonian palaces, and gave unto the fisher's hand the keys of the kingdom of heaven."