Turner's oil painting The Fighting Temeraire Tugged to Her Last Berth to Be Broken Up was completed in 1838 and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1839.

透纳的油画《被拖去解体的战舰无畏号》完成于1838年，1839年在英国皇家美术学院展出。

This painting shows the final journey of the Temeraire, as the ship is towed by a paddle-wheel steam tug from Sheerness in Kent along the river Thames to Rotherhithe in south-east London, where it was to be scrapped.

这幅画展现的是“无畏”号最后的航程。这艘战舰正由一艘蒸汽机明轮船从肯特郡的希尔内斯沿泰晤士河拖往伦敦东南部的罗瑟希德，它将在那里被报废拆解。

Built of the wood from over 5000 oaks, the 98-gun, three-decker veteran warship had played a distinguished role during the Napoleonic Wars, defending Nelson's flagship Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. With the advent of peace in 1815, most of Britain's great warships became redundant, and from 1820 the Temeraire had been moored off Sheerness, serving mainly as a supply ship.

身经百战的“无畏”号是一艘装备了98门火炮的三层甲板战列舰，耗费了5000多棵橡树的木料建造而成。该舰在拿破仑战争期间发挥了重要作用：1805年的特拉法尔加海战中，它成功护卫了纳尔逊爵士的旗舰“胜利”号。随着1815年战争结束，英国多数大型军舰成了累赘，“无畏”号自1820年起就一直停泊在希尔内斯附近，主要用作补给船。

In June 1838 the Admiralty ordered that the decaying Temeraire be sold, as the ship was by then over 40 years old and worth only the value of the timbers.Prior to sale, Temeraire was stripped by the Navy of all re-usable parts—including masts and yards--and reduced to an empty hull. The ship was sold for￡5530 to John Beatson, a Rotherhithe shipbreaker and timber merchant. As the mastless 2110-ton Temeraire was unable to sail independently, Beatson hired two steam tugs to tow it along the Thames from Sheerness to his breaker's wharf at Rotherhithe. Moving the Temcraire took about two days, and the ship finally berthed at Beatson's wharf on 6 September.

1838年6月，海军部下令出售日渐破败的“无畏”号，当时该舰已服役40多年，整舰只剩木材还值点儿钱。在售出“无畏”号之前，军方剥离了舰上所有可重复使用的部件—包括桅杆和帆桁——最后只留下了一个空壳舰体。此舰以5530英镑的价格卖给了罗瑟希德一个名叫约翰·比特森的废船包拆人和木材商。由于这艘2110吨的无枪舰船无法独立航行，比特森雇了两恨蒸汽拖船，将其沿泰晤士河从希尔内斯拖到罗思希德他安置破碎机的码头。转移“无畏”号大约花了两天，该舰最终于9月6日停靠在了比特森的那个拆解码头。

It is unlikely that Turner witnessed the Temeraire being towed-he may not even have been in England at the time一although he could have previously seen the ship when travelling past Sheerness. Instead, he imaginatively recreated the scene using contemporary reports. News of the ship's fate would have aroused his patriotism.

透纳不太可能亲眼目睹“无畏”号被拖曳的情景—他当时或许根本不在英格兰—不过他之前经过希尔内斯时可能见过这艘军舰。透纳是通过当时的大量报道展开想象，再现了拖船的场面。关于此舰命运的消息肯定曾激发他的爱国之情。

Turner's painting is as much a memorial to the heroic history of the Temeraire as it is a record of the ship's final journey. He took liberties with the facts,in part to allow the ship to retain its dignity and to draw out symbolic aspects of the image. To this end, he has shown the ship's three lower masts intact, their sails furled and still partly rigged. He has also replaced the original black and yellow paintwork with white and gold,giving the ship a ghostly presence as it glides across the glassy surface of the Thames.

透纳此画既是对“无畏”号英勇战史的纪念，也是对该舰最后航程的记录。透纳并没有完全遵照史实描绘，部分原因是为了维护这艘战舰的尊严，揭示这一场景的象征意义。为此，他将舰船较低的三根桅杆画得完好无损，桅杆上挂有收起的风帆，还有部分帆具。此外，他把原来黑色和黄色的船漆换成了白色和金色的，使舰船在泰晤士河明净如镜的水面上滑行时仿若一个幽灵。

The sunset that fills the right-hand third of the painting is fundamental to the picture's elegiac tone, as it reinforces the narrative of the Temeraire approaching its final berth. As the critic John Ruskin observed, Turner's‘most deeply crimsoned sunset skies' often signified death. The blazing copper hues of the clouds echo the tug's fiery smoke and the white disk of the sun itself is counterbalanced by the dark buoy in the lower right corner, which also creates0!scale and leads us into the scene.

落日占据了画作右侧三分之一的画面，奠定了整幅画哀伤的基调，因为它强化了“无畏”号走向生命终点的叙事。正如评论家约翰·拉斯金所说，透纳笔下“浓烈残阳染红的天空”常常象征死亡。云层耀眼的红棕色与拖船炽红的烟雾相呼应，白色圆盘般的落日则与画面右下角的深色浮标相平衡，这也构建出尺度上的对比，引领观者身入其境。

As the sun sets, a pale crescent moon rises in the top left corner. Turner had long been interested in the simultaneous appearance of the sun and the moon, but here their presence perhaps also accentuates notions of transition.Below the sun, a forest of pale masts recedes into the distance.

这边残阳落下，画面左上角则有一弯苍白新月升起。透纳一向喜欢描绘日月同辉的场景，但此画中的这一幕或许还想凸显新旧过渡转换的观念。残阳下方，林立的灰白桅杆渐渐远去。

When the picture was first exhibited in 1839 at the Royal Academy, reviewers singled it out for praise, with many noting its poetic and patriotic resonances. Despite offers to buy it, Turner kept the painting till he died in 1851. It seems to have held a special place in his affectionshe referred to it as 'his Darling'—and he may have decided early on to gift the painting to the nation. It was among the first works in the Turner Bequest' to be put on display and remains one of the National Gallery's and Britain'smost popular paintings.

这幅画1839年首次在英国皇家美术学院展出时，评论家们对其大加赞赏，很多人提到画作呈现出诗意描绘与爱国情怀的共鸣。尽管有人出价购买，但透纳直到1851年去世也没有将其售出。此画似乎在他心中占有特殊的地位——他称其为“他的宝贝”——他可能很早就已决定将此画捐赠给国家。这幅画是“透纳遗赠中最早展出的作品之一，至今仍是英国国家美术馆乃至全英国最受喜爱的一幅画作。