This is one of Bellevois`s characteristic seascapes designed to capture the atmospheric effects of the North Sea. Accordingly, in the rendering of the various elements -figures, vessels and background buildings- the artist is more concerned with blending all the features into the atmosphere than with depicting detail. The composition is structured into three planes staggered spatially towards the background, from the dark foreground to the horizon, where sunlight filters through the dense clouds creating a subtle interplay of reflections in which water, coastline and sky merge. This dramatic effect is heightened by the fact that, as is typical of mid-seventeenth-century Dutch seascapes, the horizon line is very low and the sky therefore occupies two-thirds of the scene. The brushstrokes are loose, flat and uniform, with the foam of the waves rendered in typical Bellevois fashion using fine strokes in white. The combination of large and small vessels-a Dutch ship, a Turkish galley and a vessel with a lateen sail-heading in different directions and the coastline in the distance suggests that the setting is a river estuary.

The formal and compositional characteristics of the painting enable it to be dated to the mid-1660s. There is a similar work from 1663 entitled The Meuse near Dordrecht in the Bredius Museum in The Hague (Posada Kubissa, T.: Pintura holandesa en el Museo Nacional del Prado. Catálogo razonado, 2009, p. 297).