Forty-four years after the end of the Crimean War, Charles J. Cooke was about to relinquish his post of British Vice-Consul at Sevastopol. He commissioned a local photographer to take some views of the former battlefields, which he hoped to present to Queen Victoria. However, the Queen died before the ten 'photo-aquarelles' could be sent to her. Mr Cooke kept them until 1917 when he sent them to Lord Hardinge of Penshurst (the Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs) to be presented to King George V for the Royal Library.