This painting shows Dutch boats in a fresh breeze. Boats traverse a busy waterway in order to reach the land which is visible on the far right of the composition. Two boats are laden with passengers and are ferrying people to and from the town in the distance. The largest vessel, in the centre left of the painting, is a kaag. Kaags were light cargo craft used for transporting people and provisions. The Dutch double-prince flag of the Amsterdam Admiralty is prominently positioned within the painting, flying from the mast of this ferry boat. This contributes to the ‘recognizably Dutch’ character of the scene. The vessel sails away from the viewer and holds people sitting around its sides. Its passengers face one another and are presumably engaged in social interaction. The only exception is the figure of the man in the hat, who stares outwards, seemingly engaging with the self-aware gaze of the viewer. Another man is attending to the rigging. On the right, the smaller ferry boat is visibly crammed with passengers too. Most of whom are economically articulated using tiny daubs of paint. This craft is of a flatter construction and sits lower in the water. The passengers are seated in the bow and a crew member is busy at the stern. Sails of other craft are visible in the distance. On the far left a merchant ship is at anchor. Two-thirds of the painting is occupied with the sky. A storm cloud sits over the centre of the scene. However, here, as in his roughly contemporary work, ‘Seascape with Sailors Sheltering from a Rainstorm’ (BHC0759), Peeters allows a thick band of gleaming sunlight to radiate from behind the cloud and fall onto the sea. This emphatic feature illuminates the white wave-peaks, in the foreground, but, also, acknowledges the potency of the sun as an all-powerful element in landscape. The stream of light appears as an almost celestial presence, shedding its beams on buildings and towers in the far-off landscape as well as on the ferry boat and the surrounding water.

The iconographic content of the painting affirms the importance given to shipping in the Netherlands, both as a practical means of transporting goods and people and as an income-generating business. Despite being the work of a Flemish artist, Peeters’ painting shares a number of similarities with de Vlieger’s portrayal of 'A Dutch Ferry Boat' (BHC0772) which, also, shows a ferry boat travelling across choppy waters. As in de Vlieger’s painting, a high viewpoint facilitates a more complete rendering of the vividly coloured characters that are seated in the central vessel. The increasing affluence of the Dutch merchant classes led to a demand for small-scale cabinet pictures to hang in domestic interiors and Bonaventura Peeters the Elder seems to have specialized in this type of work. The city harbour was a popular subject in seventeenth century Holland and those painters who could represent the city's economic link with the sea found great success. Peeters was commissioned to paint harbour views by several city authorities. The Dutch port cities had reason to be proud, since Holland's extraordinary wealth hinged on the pursuit and defence of global shipping.

Born in Antwerp into a prominent artistic family, Bonaventura Peeters the Elder was the brother of artists Gillis, Jan and Clara Peeters and the uncle of Bonaventura Peeters the Younger. Comparatively little is known about his early life. Although the intimate and accurate knowledge of ships evinced in his many marine paintings hint at an early life spent at sea. De Bie commended Peeters on his delicate and convincing treatment of seas, calms and tempests. While Houbraken succinctly described the artist as a proficient and naturalistic master of ‘air, water, rocks and beaches.’ In 1634, Peeters joined the Antwerp Guild of St Luke, continuing to live and work in the city until the early 1640s. He died in 1652. The painting is inscribed 'BP' on a floating spar on the lower right of the painting.