William Heysham Overend ROI (5 October 1851 – 18 March 1898) was a British marine artist and book illustrator who died prematurely in 1898.

William Heysham Overend[note 1][1] was born on 5 October 1851 in Coatham, County Durham.

[3]: 307 [4][5]: 631  However, it seems more likely that his birthplace was Coatham Mundeville near Darlington, as: His parents were James Overend (1821 – 2 November 1875[8][9]), a flax spinner, born in Bentham, Yorkshire, and Martha née Hodgson (1824–1886), born in Hawkshead, Lancashire and the daughter of Braithwaite Hodgson, a wealthy landowner.

He was already showing early promise as Athol states that a sketch drawn by him at age 14, of a boarding party, would not have disgraced a student of the Royal Academy.

[7] By 1871, he was a lodger, with the profession of artist (painter), together with Edward Overend, an unemployed Naval Engineer, in a small lodging house at 14 Clapton Terrace in Hackney, London.

He was b miles from the coast, and had no relatives in either the merchant or naval service, yet his knowledge of past and present ships of war was matched by few sailors.

[15] Knowing virtually no-one in the United States, but supplied with letters of introduction from the US Minister in London to the navy department at Washington, he went vigorously to work to collect his material.

[7] He interviewed survivors[16] and enlisted the aid of Farragut's son, a Naval Captain, in his researches.

[19] The title of the work, and even the work itself,[16] were both drawn from a vivid account of the battle of Mobile harbour by J. C. Kinney which was published in the June 1881 edition of Scribner's Magazine under the title An August Morning with Farragut.

On the morning of 4 August 1864 Admiral Farragut's fleet, consisting of 14 ships and four monitors forced their way past the forts protecting Mobile Bay.

It struck the Hartford a glancing blow on the port bow and then the ships ground past each other, the moment captured in the painting.

[7] In the painting, the observer seems to be at the port taffrail amidships on the Hartford, looking backwards towards the wheel and quarter-deck.

[7] The Pall Mall Gazette of 1 November 1883 announced that the Fine Art Society would shortly be selling prints of the painting.

[25] It was also displayed in other towns throughout the US including Cedar Rapids, Iowa,[26] and finally in Hartford, Connecticutin January 1886.

[5]: 202 Overend illustrated not only juvenile fiction, but also books for adults, such as George Smith's campaigning book about the treatment of Gypsies[note 8] or William Clark Russell's novel A Strange Elopement (1892) in which a young man carries off, in mid-ocean, a young woman from the custody of the most truculent and vigilant of fathers.

His knowledge of the detail of the old ships was unequalled, and his accuracy in matters naval, both archaeological and of the present day, was proverbial.

Modest, unassuming, and amiable, no man was more cordially liked by his professional brethren, while the high appreciation in which he was held by those who cherish naval art and literature was shown by his election to the council of the Navy Records Society."