During the 1880s, the annual Henley Regatta 'proved a sort of Saturnalia', when the town transformed at night into a festival of fire and water. Newspapers described scenes of 'extraordinary picturesqueness' filled with 'festoons of Chinese lanterns, and rockets bursting into the sky 'with showers of descending stars of fire' (Evening News, 1889). Amongst the 'hundreds of lights … swaying and rocking over the black shadows', The Daily News noticed during the 1886 regatta one particular boat 'illuminated with lanterns of bright green and vivid crimson … The play of these colours on the water is exceedingly beautiful. These boats would be very striking if they blazed along upon the river, but they are thrown into more striking effect by a dark background of trees.'

Walter Truscott was from Falmouth, where he and his brothers ran Messrs Truscott Bros. studio, where Walter sold both his paintings and their photographs.