This is one of a group of watercolours usually dated 1824, when Bonington, who visited Dunkerque on a number of occasions, was there for a particularly long stay from late February until May or June. It is a variant of a slightly larger watercolour in a private collection (7¾ x 10¼in.; see Patrick Noon, Richard Parkes Bonington 'On the Pleasure of Painting', exhibition catalogue, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, and Petit Palais, Paris, 1991-2, p.123 no.33, repr. in colour). Unlike the other version the brown sail of the small boat in the centre of the composition is in the process of being lowered while a wave breaks across the hull, and there is no buoy below that boat.
The sky and the placing of the seagulls are also slightly varied, and the tower of the church on the right of the other version is absent, presumably concealed behind the sails of the two large ships. Scratching out is used more to suggest the roughness of the sea than to indicate the shallow water near the shore as in the other version