(Updated, November 2013) This large painting shows the English fleet arriving in the Solent led by 'Prince Royal'. It is bearing Prince Charles and the Duke of Buckingham - for whom this version is thought to have been painted - on their return from Spain in October 1623. The fleet is shown approaching Portsmouth, which is out of sight on the right, the spit of land in the right middle distance being the eastern tip of the Isle of Wight. On the right of the picture and on the port tack is the 'Prince Royal', 55 guns, with the Prince and the Duke on her half-deck, and following her on the same tack are the 'St Andrew', 42 guns, 'Defiance', 40 guns and 'Bonaventure', 34 guns. On the left of the picture more ships are wearing round and in the background, strung out along the horizon on the starboard tack, is the rest of the fleet - twenty-three ships in all. In the reign of James I striped ensigns remained popular and this painting shows all the ships in the fleet with ensigns with St George's cross in a small canton and numerous stripes of blue, white and gold.

The painting marks the end of what had started as an audacious escapade, instigated by the Duke of Buckingham and sanctioned by James I, to further the match between the Prince of Wales and the Spanish Infanta. The prince was to travel incognito through France to Madrid where he would make his suit in person, accompanied by Endymion Porter, a courtier who had been brought up in Spain. They arrived in March 1623 but their protracted negotiations were doomed to failure, partly because of Spanish insistence on Charles becoming a Catholic. Buckingham's demeanour also did not find favour at the formal Spanish court and Charles finally left.

The painting, formerly in the collection of the Earls of Sandwich at Hinchingbroke, bears a painted label with a Latin inscription in the bottom right: 'Carolus Walliæ princeps ex Hispania reversus (Deo fovente) Portes muthiæ Sospes appulit Vo die Octobris Ano Salutis 1623' (Charles, Prince of Wales, returns safely [by the favour of God] from Spain to Portsmouth', 5 October in the year of grace 1623). There is another slightly larger version of this painting in the Royal Collection which is presumed to be that recorded at the Palace of Oatlands in 1649 as by 'young Vroom'. This is not, however, exactly the same or of the same quality as the Greenwich version. Margarita Russell, in her monograph on H. C. Vroom ('Visions of the Sea of the Sea', Leiden, 1983 pp.187-88) expressed the view that the style of the Greenwich version, though in H. C. Vroom's circle, was not by him and speculated that it might be by his second son Frederick (d.1667) who is known to have painted marines -though none are now identified. Frederick is also known to have visited London, where Isaac Oliver painted his portrait in miniature. Russell tacitly accepted that the Greenwich version is the first, done for Buckingham, and that the Royal one - which was then heavily overpainted and which she did not apparently have opportunity see closely - is a copy done for the Duke to give Prince Charles. This, however, falls down on comparison of the two. The Royal one is clearly by different hands and technical examination in 2006 showed it has many early compositional changes and was painted on a different type of canvas to the Greenwich version. It is not at all clear whether the changes are the adjustments of a less than exact copying process, or the working out of an original composition - which would make the Greenwich picture a more accomplished second version. One of the two pictures may therefore be by Frederick Vroom, but if it is the Greenwich version the 1649 record is wrong, or alludes to the Royal one only as a copy after him. The Greenwich one is certainly closer to his father's style and while the issues of chronology and authorship of both present continuing problems, attribution of the Greenwich one to 'old Vroom' (i.e including his studio) remains the conservative option.

Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom was born and died in Haarlem. He initially earned his living as a painter of delftware but then travelled extensively in Spain, Italy and France. On his final return to Haarlem he developed his career as a marine painter and was commissioned in the 1590s to design a series of ten tapestries for the English Lord Admiral, Lord Howard of Effingham (Earl of Nottingham from 1596), to commemorate his victory over the Spanish Armada. Vroom pioneered marine painting as a specialist form as the Dutch rose to become a leading maritime power. He worked widely in Europe and his importance was internationally recognized. He is regarded as the father of marine painting and he pioneered the painting of naval scenes and battles in a new style, showing careful attention to naval detail and rigging. He outlived his pupil, Jan Porcellis, by eight years.