Sorrento is on the narrow eastern peninsula at the entrance to Port Phillip Bay. A popular watering spot for Melburnians in summer, it has a protected beach with-in Port Phillip Bay together with an ocean beach, (known as the Back beach) facing Bass Strait.
The scene depicts people looking out at the storm from the rock formation known as London Bridge, now collapsed.
 
Published in The Australasian Sketcher. 1876.
 
Wood engraving.
 
152 mm x 223 mm.
 
Wood engravings were first produced in Europe in the fifteenth century. During the late eighteenth century the process was reintroduced and used for inexpensive illustrated books. The nineteenth century publishing phenomena of the illustrated newspaper was made possible by use of the technique. The process allowed for the illustration and the text to be printed by a single pass through the printing press using the letterpress method.  It also made it possible for several engravers or even a team to produce and work on a single illustration at the same time.
 
All the major artists of the period contributed to the illustrations. Some papers acknowledged the artists on the plates but The Australasian Sketcher appears to have had a policy of anonymity. Where known, we have included the artist’s name.