Eakins took advantage of one outing to New Jersey's Atlantic shore to make this photograph of catboats beached on the sand. Such boats were difficult to photograph under sail, when they were far from land, rocking with the waves, and moving too swiftly for the relatively slow shutter speeds Eakins employed. It is likely that he used similar photographs as studies for his painting Sailboats Racing on the Delaware, also in the Museum's collections.
