An early drawing drawn with pen and brown ink and grey wash on vellum. It is signed ‘W.V. Velde’. A date of around 1650 has been suggested. The drawing style would seem to have some relationship with the technique van de Velde used to make pen-paintings in the 1650s, but the purpose of his drawings on vellum is not known. Like the pen-paintings the drawing is very detailed. It shows a large number of herring busses fishing with two ships in the background. A buss (Dutch buis) was a flute or narrow-sterned vessel used by the Dutch and English for the herring fishery in the North Sea.