A Dutch flagship shortening sail. To the right is a starboard view of a ship under bare poles with a fresh wind on the starboard quarter; a flag at the mizzen. The main course is furled, the fore course hauled up and hands are furling the fore and main topsails. In the left background is a view from before the lee beam of a ship close-hauled on the starboard tack. Two other ships are in the distance.

This is part of a group of eleven drawings compositional in character. It is only very approximately dated but distinguished from later sketches for paintings by the greater detail and by the lack of heavy pencil-work in the sky.

There is another version of this drawing in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. It is almost certainly a copy by an 18th-century hand, and even this drawing is not above suspicion.