Quote:

and in the Tate, i found Turner. Painting after painting of the Hesperas, a fire, in the fog, a blacken hull



Your mother was more likely referring to Longfellow's poem "The Wreck of the Hesperus".

While JMW Turner did paint lots of ships (including "The shipwreck of the Minotaur"), I don't think there's one specifically of the Hesperus.