File:View of the Town and Harbour, St. George’s, Grenada, West Indies GAC 6706.jpg

Captain Henry A. Turner’s company of the first battalion of the Royal Artillery landed at Barbados on the Atholl troop ship early in 1849. The ‘lady of Captain Turner’ gave birth to a daughter on the neighbouring island of Grenada on 16 July that year. It was not until 1853 that another company of the Royal Artillery arrived at Barbados to release Turner’s company. In 1858 Turner presented two watercolour views of Grenada to the Royal Artillery Institution. Captain Henry may be Henry Austin Turner, who rose through the ranks of the Royal Artillery to become Lieutenant Colonel in 1855 and Major-General on his retirement in 1865. Henry Austin died at Bath in 1875 at the age of 60.

Watercolourist and painter William Simpson was born in Glasgow, the son of a marine engineer and mechanic. He trained as a lithographer under David Macfarlane and later Allan and Ferguson, and also studied at the Glasgow School of Design. In 1851 he moved to London to work for the lithographers Day & Son. He was sent to cover the Crimean War in 1854, after which he became known as ‘Crimean Simpson’. In 1866 he became an artist for the ‘Illustrated London News’, travelling in India, Russia and Afghanistan, and covering several major military campaigns of the 19th century. In 1874 he became a member of the Institute of Painters in Watercolour. He was also an amateur archaeologist and a prolific writer. Simpson died in London, aged 75.