Cleveley the Younger accompanied Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander on the first British scientific expedition to Iceland in 1772, travelling as the expedition artist. He was the son of a ship's carpenter and marine artist, and depicted a variety of maritime subjects, as well as working up on-the-spot sketches by others, particularly sailors, into finished compositions for engraving. In 1774 he made a series of watercolours of ice-bound ships, based on sketches made by Philippe d'Auvergne, a member of the British Naval North Pole Expedition of 1773.
British whaling in the Arctic began in earnest in 1750, when the bounty was increased to £2 per ton, and twenty ships sailed north. By 1753 there were 35 English and 14 Scottish whalers sailing to the Arctic, returning with some 150 whales.