A painting of a19th century ship collision has sold for more than four times the estimate price.

The oil on glass image was marked to go under the hammer online for £350, but instead went for £1,488 on Tuesday.

A spokesman for auctioneers Charles Miller Ltd said: "This is just the unpredictability and nature of auctions - and the excitement of them."

The image shows HMS Castor running down the Customs House cutter Cameleon off Dover, on August 27, 1834.

Most of Cameleon's crew died.

There is no artist attributed to the picture but it is from the English School, the country's main school of painting in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

The collision led to the court martial of officers and crew of Castor on September 6, 1834, in Plymouth.

The officers were acquitted but the lieutenant of the watch was dismissed after it was found that proper scrutiny had not been kept.

HMS Castor was a 36-gun naval frigate built at Chatham Dockyard and launched in 1832.

She was involved in a number of sea battles, including in the Middle East and Far East.

In 1849 she was dispatched to the Cape of Good Hope to take part in the Royal Navy's anti-slavery patrols.

In 1851 and 1852 she captured several slave vessels and destroyed a barracoon, a prison for slaves pending their transportation.

HMS Castor was made a training ship from 1860 and was sold in Sheerness in 1902 to be taken to a breaker's yard in London.