Tunnard was an Auxiliary Coastguard at Cadgwith in Cornwall during the Second World War and spent his hours on duty observing shipping passing through the English Channel.
Anglo Dutch (1942) probably refers to a cargo ship or tanker but is a fantasy machine. It was painted after Tunnard's association with the British Surrealist Group and is one of his constructivist works, in which the architectural shape that dominates the picture plane is overlaid with a passing cavalcade of transparent and mysterious forms; the abstract outline of a ship's rudder, weather dogs, signal masts and the triangles and dots of chart symbols.