A fast, rakish Mediterranean sailing craft, most familiar as an armed merchant vessel of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuies. It was a favourite of the Muslim corsairs of North Africa, who persistently preyed on European shipping over that period until finally supressed in the 1820s.

Xebecs could be rowed or sailed and usually had a three masted lanteen rig, or one combining lanteen and square sails. The formast raked forward over a sharp projecting stem and there was an overhanging counter stern. One version was used by the French on the Canadian Great Lakes in the eighteenth century and the last xebecs were twentieth century Tunisian fishing boats.

The artist, Abraham Casembrodt, is thought to have been from the Netherlands.