What’s the origin of the Whitebait Dinner ?  The RA has always had a social aspect ever since the foundation of an informal dining club called the Friday Nights Club, first held at the Turk’s Head Tavern on 5 October 1770.   In the nineteenth century, it was known as the Academy Club and met on the opening day of the exhibition at the Trafalgar Tavern in Greenwich (there are menus from the 1869s in the Museum of London) and later in the summer somewhere in the countryside.   Turner loved the Whitebait dinners and it is thought to be during the trip downriver in 1838 that he saw the Téméraire being dragged off to Deptford to be broken up as scrap.