Peter Scott was just three years old in 1912 when his father, Captain Robert Falcon Scott R.N., died attempting to conquer the South Pole. As he lay facing the inevitable end, Captain Scott wrote a last letter to his wife Kathleen, a sculptor, with advice about their son: 'make the boy interested in natural history if you can — it is better than games.' When Peter grew up he became a wildlife artist, studying painting first in Munich, where he stayed with one of the Professors, the renowned animal painter Angelo Jank. After Germany, he studied at the Royal Academy Schools in London, where, he admitted, 'I won no prizes and I had no very advanced ideas about the future of art … my most serious limitation was an unbridled propensity for adventure. I wanted things to happen.' He was a talented ice skater, a sailor (winning an Olympic bronze medal in 1936), and later in life he took up gliding — but his life-long passion was wildfowl, particularly geese.

His first one-man exhibition at the wildlife paintings specialist dealers Ackermann in London was in 1933. It was a success, and he held an exhibition there each year thereafter until 1940. These shows, and the publication of a series of prints after his work, made him one of the most popular artists in Britain. Typical of a man in a hurry, Scott's paintings are not subtle, being broadly and swiftly painted, but they have an economy, energy and attack that can be apt and winning. Thus, his studio portraits are rather wooden, but his paintings of birds in their habitat are wonderfully alive. His technique also suits the confusion, the terror and the savage beauty of military action.

When the Second World War was declared, as a member of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, he helped to supervise the last evacuation of wounded troops from Dunkirk before serving as First Lieutenant on a destroyer in the North Atlantic. His first command was of Steam Gun Boat Grey Goose, part of a small squadron which popped in and out of harbours the length of the British coast to surprise and harry the enemy. Offensive advantage in this theatre of war was won by speed, surprise and firepower, mostly in night actions hidden from enemy aircraft, for which Steam Gun Boats, Motor Torpedo Boats and Motor Gun Boats were designed.

In the action depicted here, the moon is behind, dangerously silhouetting the Grey Goose to the German R Boats, which outnumbered his ships that night. Deep shadows are thrown by the powerful magnesium light from a starshell (parachute flare), out of which the dark shapes of the enemy boats emerge. It was impossible to distinguish friend from foe in these actions. There was a lot of panicked firing, some of it friendly, and there were many collisions, missed chances and miraculous escapes. Tracer bullets apparently arc across the scene (they seem to arc because of the movement of the observer, probably turning at speed). Every fifth round was coloured to see where you were shooting, but of course that works both ways and using tracer could make the shooter the target. Tiny amounts of an oxide of strontium in the bullet produces red, of barium, green, and of magnesium, white. Like many other combatants, Scott routinely took benzedrine (a powerful amphetamine) during night missions to stay alert, which could give a hallucinatory dimension to perception. In his 1961 autobiography The Eye of the Wind, Scott described an action in the Channel, probably the one depicted, in June 1943:

At least fifteen ships had opened fire simultaneously and the air was thick with the red and green and white streaks. They ripped away from our guns towards the enemy line, they fanned out of the enemy ships and came lobbing towards us almost as though you could reach out and catch them, until they whipped past just over our heads singing as they went; they criss-crossed ahead and astern, they ricocheted off the water and popped as they exploded in the air, and they thumped into us from time to time with a shower of sparks. It would all have been very beautiful as a spectacle if it had not been so dreadfully frightening.

Seven men of the SGB Squadron died and 30 were wounded in this action, which earned Scott a Bar to his DSC. He also described another action which took place soon after:

Suddenly a brilliant light burst overhead, and then another and another. We were bathed in a dazzling white glare while the star-shells floated lazily down on their parachutes. Tracers and the heavy shells followed, streams of green and white shimmering out across the calm sea and great shell splashes spouting up all round. The tracer seemed to be a barrage, for it criss-crossed about in a tangled network of flying sparks.