There is a clarity about the combination of crisp, line engraved black transfer and clear glazed creamware which is especially effective in capturing that sense of excitement and destiny we associate with the young republic in American themed images.  Here the oversized American flag unfurled at the stern of the vessel leaves no doubt of the national identity of the Herculaneum potters' target market.

The blank is one of Herculaneum’s typical, gently scalloped profiles decorated with random floral sprigs around the flange. The artist goes to great pains in the detailed depiction of the impressive three-masted sailing vessel.  Examining the transfer, one notes not a single excess line in the execution of ship, rigging, stylized waves, figurehead or American flag.  The graphic ocean waves are finished off neatly with a line of printed beading at the base of the image.   

David and Linda Arman in Anglo-American Ceramics, Part I: Transfer Printed Creamware and Pearlware for the American Market, 1760-1860 illustrate this view noting that it was a stock transfer identified with no specific vessel (p. 176, S. 60). They also illustrate a plate and platter with a different view, but identical border and blank  (p. 171, S. 44,45) -- demonstrating Herculaneum's ingenuity in combining views, blanks and borders. 

A similar plate, also impressed Herculaneum, appears in the Northern Ceramic Society's 1986 exhibition catalog, Creamware and Pearlware (p. 88, plate 121). 

Images of sailing vessels, with their prominent American flags, like transfer prints of American heroes, civic structures, and scenic wonders, were obviously produced to take advantage of the emerging sense of pride of the American consumer.