The earliest and probably the first Turner to be purchased by his great patron the 3rd Earl of Egremont. There are a number of sketches in the 'Calais Pier' sketchbook (T.B.LXXXI-64-7, 72-3, 88-9).

Here, still more than in the Bridgewater Sea Piece, Turner applied the Poussinesque principles of composition first seen in The Fifth Plague to the tradition of marine painting in England, which, based on the work of the van der Veldes in the later seventeenth century, had continued more or less unaltered until the end of the eighteenth. Once again, however, Turner uses the selective fall of light to clarify his design, particularly in the complex of overlapping ships in the centre. When Turner repeated the composition for the Liber Studiorum plate, R.10, published on 20 February 1808 (No.103), he condensed and simplified the composition and called it 'Ships in a Breeze'.