A port bow view of a two-decker at anchor in a fresh breeze with a fair sea running. Her mizzen topsail is half hoisted and aback. In the left distance is a vice-admiral at anchor with a red flag at the fore. In the right background a ship and a yacht are under way, and ships and vessels at anchor are in the distance. The drawing is likely to have been made immediately following the First Battle of Schooneveld, the first that van de Velde the Elder observed from the English side.

Slight corrections and strengthenings in pen and brown ink have been added by his son, Van de Velde the Younger, who continued to use his father's drawings as resources and teaching materials. Dotted lines in brown ink by the sterns of the nearest ship and the one on the right indicate the correct waterlines to make the ships appear the right relative size. It has been rubbed on the back, an offset has apparently been taken from it.