Employed in the family coachmaking business, this older Francis also worked independently as a decorative and ornamental painter, including church murals, the occasional portrait and marine paintings. Whether the two Francis Hustwicks worked together after the younger completed his family apprenticeship in 1818 is not clear, nor has the latter's precise relationship within the Hustwick family been determined.

By the time the younger Francis moved to Liverpool he was already a competent ship portrait painter. Now aged about fifty, and facing stiff competition from established marine artists, his addresses suggest that he struggled to make a living in the larger port. Apart from decorative and ornamental painting, he may have worked as a part time assistant to some of the established Liverpool ship painters such as Joseph Heard. This would account for the fact that he seems to have felt it necessary to maintain a low profile by seldom signing his paintings. Certainly he seems to have modified his style on settling in Liverpool, absorbing many of the traits of the port's better known contemporary marine painters. Tragically he contracted typhus and died in a Liverpool workhouse in 1865.