A recurrent theme throughout the artist’s career, the sea fascinates Jean Delpech, who depicted warships on several occasions. During the Second World War, he expressed this interest above all in his engravings. The artist’s main focus was on the Richelieu, which he showed from a variety of angles, seen from the battleship’s interior and exterior alike, in a series of highly graphic works. In July 1945, Jean Delpech travelled to the submarine base (or U-Bunker) in Saint-Nazaire, a huge concrete structure built by the Todt Organisation between 1941 and 1942 and acting as the Kriegsmarine’s home port, in order to create a reportage for the periodical L’Armée Française au Combat. He visited a U-Boat and brought back several drawings which he used to create his engraving U-Boot 700t in 1945. In 1956, the artist was appointed Painter to the Navy, a post that enabled him to sail at will aboard the Navy’s ships from the mid-1950s onwards.