A Painting for Peerless

I get to teach Raffles v. Wichelhaus today, which is always a pleasure, as it is one of my favorite cases.  I am not alone.  One of my students, Justin Vining, was inspired by the case to make a representation of the case in the painting below:

I afraid my photo of the painting does not do it justice (because I have it under glass), but I hope you can see that Justin has captured the ship’s voyage from India to Liverpool, and he has used as his model for the ship, the image of a ship called Peerless (right) that often accompanies the case, even though (I recently learned) that the Peerless in the picture is neither the October Peerless or the December Peerless featured in the case.  But I actually love the fact that there were (at least) three ships called Peerless.  That’s what makes this case such a truth-is-stranger-than-fiction bonanza.

[JT]