Ships in the Roads

This calm was painted around 1658. Two years later, when Charles II returned to the English throne, the city of Amsterdam presented him with a yacht, the Mary, built by the Dutch East India Company, and the English word yacht itself comes from the Dutch jacht. A vessel of that kind lies in the right foreground here. Its stern is richly carved and gilded, with a red Dutch lion and the arms of Amsterdam, and Willem van de Velde signed his name across the ribbon on its rail. The water is almost dead still. Just beyond it, the crew of a three-masted ship are hoisting a headsail, a passenger is being rowed ashore, and people on the yacht watch it all. Far off, a low strip of land with a town sits right on the horizon.