In this picture Turner elevated a genre scene, coupled with his own experiences on visiting France in 1802, to an unprecedented scale, claiming for it equal rank with the Biblical Plagues and great marines of this and the previous two years. The personal experiences are enshrined in the 'Calais Pier' sketchbook which includes several drawings with such inscriptions as 'Our Landing at Calais. Nearly swampt' and ‘Our Situation at Calais Bar' (T.B.LXXXI-58v and 59, 70, 7I, 74v and 75, 76v and 77, 78v and 79). Despite its title, however, the sketchbook only seems to contain one sketch directly related to this picture, for the light-sailed boat in the middle distance (LXXXI-151; cf. also 146-50).

The title in the 1803 exhibition catalogue is typically slap-dash, Turner having made up the pseudo-French word ‘Poissards' from 'poissarde', which can mean a fish-wife. Farington, whose sycophancy and reverence for the accepted opinions of the old guard seems to have led him to take considerable delight in recording negative opinions on Turner's work, records examples of qualified praise from Benjamin West, Fuseli and Sir George Beaumont. As usual it was the lack of finish in the foreground that was criticised, even by so careless a technician as Fuseli, who 'commended' the picture, holding that it 'shewed great power of mind', but that perhaps the foreground was 'too little attended to, - too undefined'. John Britton in the British Press was readier with praise, but criticised the opacity of the clouds, certainly not a criticism that one could make of Turner's later works.

Farington also recorded that 'Lord Gower asked the price of the "Calais Harbour", & Turner signified that it must be more than that for which He sold a picture to the Duke of Bridgewater (250 guineas)’ (see No.71). The painting remained in Turner's possession and was engraved much later, in 1827, by Thomas Lupton as a companion to the print of 'The Shipwreck' but was left unfinished as Turner insisted, on account of the change in scale, on enlarging and adding to the boats.