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This is the first - and so far as I can tell, the last - etching by the Boston-based marine painter Walter Franklin Lansil. We know exactly how it was executed, from a description by Sylvester Rosa Koehler, the first curator of prints at the Museum of Fine Art, Boston. Koehler writes: "It is eminently 'home-made.' The ground was prepared according to the recipe given; the points used were a sewing-needle and a knitting-needle; the tray in which it was etched was made of paper covered with stopping-out varnish; even the plate (a zink plate, by the way) did not come from the plate-maker, but was ground and polished at home." Walter Franklin Lansil, Ships in Boston Harbor Etching, 1879 Walter Franklin Lansil was born in Bangor, Maine, in 1846. He studied originally under J. P. Hardy in Bangor, alongside his younger brother Wilbur. In 1872 the brothers moved to Boston, which remained their base. However in 1888 they headed for Paris, to study at the Acad�mie Julian. Walte