During the early 1830s Turner exhibited a group of pictures inspired by seventeenth-century Dutch marine artists. This is one example, which suggests the kind of finish to which the later, unfinished works in this room might have been brought, had Turner continued to work on them.

Years of careful observation gave real credibility to Turner's depictions of marine incidents. However, his first viewers sometimes challenged the details of his work. Here, for example, Turner's title evokes the Anglo-Dutch Sea War of 1652-4, but the state barge in the foreground is equipped with later rigging.