For, she could not fly the flag of the Royal Navy on her last journey. The poet Campbell wrote, "The flag which braved the battle and the breeze, no longer owns her ". "Where the union flag once flew, the Tug's smoke now ascends. The full poignancy of the lines adapted from Campbell can now be understood. The angle at which the tug's smoke is emitted is crucially important in making this point. It must belch out from a funnel sufficiently far forward and sufficiently tall for the smoke to be see as fiery as it leaves the funnel, and seemingly still acid as it pours backwards over the (now empty of Navy's flag) bowspit cap and through Temeraire's masts. To achieve this effect, Turner ignores all contemporary steamer designs - and all his first hand observations of steamers - by placing the funnel foremost in the tug, in front of the empty mast". .
Apparently Turner was really upset and angry when J.T. Willmore, corrected the position of the funnel and its mast, in his 1845 engraving of the Temeraire. .
Also in the Painting the white flag flying from the tug is higher than the Temeraire masts, thus making the absence of any flag on the Termeraire even more evident.
"Turner's mistake in placing his tug's funnel before its mast is evidently deliberate; R.C. Leslie perceived it to be Turner first strong, almost prophetic idea for, "smoke, soot, Iron and steam", coming in the front of all navel matters". .
" Some critics have said the tug is "a little, spiteful, diabolical steamer; proceeding with such malignant alacrity as might befit an executioner". 9 Turner's attitude was probably more ambiguous. It is not at all clear that Turner found the tug spiteful or malignant. Perhaps he just thought of it as a sign of the changing times. The manner in which the tug is painted is by no means ugly, for it too catches the last of the sunset glow. In the painting it seems to me that the tug is carefully using the power of his small engine to carry the vast weight of the vessel safely up river and there is a lovely contrast in colour and size between the two.
