On the left is the sea wall of a village, with a smalschip sailing along it in starboard bow view. The wall runs away to the right with open country beyond the village end, across the calm intervening water. In the top right there is a smaller view of a village on a river or coast.

This work is one of a group of twelve drawings of shore scenes or distant views of the Dutch coastline in pen and brown ink (PAE5158, PAE5159, PAE5160, PAE5161, PAE5162, PAE5163, PAE5164, PAE5165, PAE5166, PAE5167, PAE5168, PAE5169). It is likely from the appearance of the ships in all these works that they were made in the 1650s. They were probably done in connection with the elder van de Velde's earliest pen-paintings, since he probably did not need such sketches later, and had passed as by several different artists until re-attributed by Sir Bruce Ingram.