Charles II journeyed by road and water from Breda to The Hague. After a short stay there, he went on to Scheveningen and on 23 May [OS]/2 June 1660, standing in a pink on the crowded shore, he took leave of Elisabeth of Bohemia, the Princess Royal, the young Prince of Orange and the States deputies. Then in Sandwich’s barge he went on board the ‘Naseby’, which he renamed the ‘Royal Charles’ before sailing with the fleet for England.

This drawing features the ‘Royal Charles’ viewed from the weather quarter, close-hauled on the starboard tack, under fore course, mizzen and topsails. The royal standard is at the main and streamers are at the yardarms.

It is an accurate drawing but with disfiguring corrections, made probably as the ship left the Dutch coast with the Restoration squadron. The tafferel (upper stern) decoration is not shown in detail but appears to include a roundel with a suggestion of a bust length figure, and was undoubtedly originally emblematic of the Commonwealth, for whom the ship was built. The substantially intact royal arms which decorated the tafferel when the Dutch seized the 'Royal Charles' in the notorious Medway Raid of 1667, and which survive today in the Rijkmuseum, Amsterdam, were installed in a post-Restoration re-fit. They are shown in Ludolf Backhuysen's painting of the ship being carried into Dutch waters at that time (BHC0292), which takes practically the same viewpoint as this drawing.