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Oil on canvas, 91cm x 127cm
Jenkinson painted several views of Liverpool across the Mersey from the Wirral shore. In this painting he uses a number of vessels to frame the central subject of a distant view of the main town and the north shore. To the left a three-masted ship in quarter stern view fills the side of the canvas with a second ship crossing her bow; to the right the framing is provided by a short stretch of shore with a couple of coasters, including a beached schooner, her masts angled to draw the eye into the centre of the picture. A number of small boats are being rowed across the river and other shipping lies off the area of the old dock. A particularly nice compositional touch is the figure of a shrimper with his net and basket, accompanied by a young boy and his dog, in the foreground at the water's edge.
The principal landmarks of the town are shown beginning at the left with the domes of St Paul's and the Town Hall visible behind the warehouses and the Old Fort on the waterfront, the spire of St George and as the main focus the prominent tower of St Nicholas and then the spire of St Thomas and the south end disappearing behind the off shore shipping.
The painting probably dates to about 1815 but is certainly before 1817 when the Old Fort was demolished to make way for the new Prince's Dock. For many years it was wrongly attributed to Jenkinson's better known contemporary Robert Salmon.