Willem van de Velde the Younger

The Prince and Princess went on board the yachts at Erith.  Off Sheerness the wind fell very light, and so they landed and went overland to Margate, where they picked up the yachts again several days later.  Here the yachts are shown off Erith on 19th November O.S.

In an album of drawings primarily by William van de Velde the Elder and the Younger

M.S. Robinson, A Catalogue of Drawings in the National Maritime Museum made by the Elder and the Younger Willem van de Velde, Cambridge 1958, vol. I, p. 95;
idem, The Willem van de Velde Drawings in the Boymans-van Beuningen Museum Rotterdam, 3 vols., Rotterdam 1979, vol. I, p. 69

Laid down on paper. The work is made up of two joined sheets which meet vertically at the centre of the composition. There are two additional old fold lines running vertically down the width of the sheet. There is scattered foxing throughout and some further light brown stains. The sheet has been made up in the upper right corner with smaller areas also made up along the lower edge. The medium itself is still predominantly fresh.
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William of Orange and Princess Mary were married at St. James's on 4/14 November 1677.  They left Whitehall on 19/29 November and were accompanied by the King as far as Erith, where they went on board the yachts that were to carry them back to Holland.  Off Sheerness the wind fell very light, and so they landed at Kingsferry on the Isle of Sheppey, and proceeded overland, staying at Sittingbourne and Canterbury, before picking up the yachts again at Margate, on 28 November/8 December.  They landed at Ter Heide the following day, and made their public entrance into The Hague on 4/14 December. 

Van de Velde the Elder apparently travelled with the royal party, sailing on the Mary (seen here in the middle of the composition, and identified by the artist below), and made a series of at least 56 drawings recording the various stages of their journey.  This rapid sketch, showing the yachts off Erith and surely made on the spot, seems from its numbering to have been the second drawing in this epic series, but as no previous drawing has been identified, it is the earliest known from the series, executed on the first day of the couple's journey, 19/29 November. 

In the inscriptions along the bottom of the sheet, which are, unusually, in pen and ink, the artist identifies the various yachts that comprised the party:  from left to right, we see the Greyhound (grahont), Katherine (katrijn), Mary (de marij), Anne (d an), Charlotte (d sarlot), d soldado (unidentified) and the Navy (d nafi).