A depiction of a stormy sea with several ships heading for the rocks. A coastline is shown in the distance on the right together with outcrops of rock and a rock arch on the shore in the foreground. Although the ship on the left is at anchor, it is pitching steeply in the waves. With sails down, its struggle to keep off the rocks is indicated by the tension on the cable. White foam dashes the rocks on the right, throwing up a film of spray. Nature is shown at its most threatening to man, indicated by the jagged flash of lightning highlighted against the dark menacing sky.

In Dutch marine paintings, rocks, storms and ships can be allegorical symbols of the trials and tribulations of the life of man. The ship moving through the water becomes a metaphor for either man or the nation's journey through life. Prominently featured rocks in a stormy sea could imply man's endurance and steadfastness of faith and thus stand as symbols of constancy in virtue and in political principles. Alternatively, where rocks were shown in association with cliffs they constituted a deadly danger to man. The power of a storm can either undermine and destroy the seemingly immovable, or be emblematic of God's supreme power. Such ambivalence is implied here where one ship has already been wrecked on the rocks. Thus, although they constitute a danger, the artificiality of the arched rock acts as a symbol of hope, suggesting that land may also represent salvation for the men on board. Such an ambivalent reading is endorsed by the two figures on the rocks in the foreground.

Simon de Vlieger was the first Dutch marine artist to introduce the motif of a rocky arch over water. He was believed to have influenced Hendrick Staets, who worked in Leiden and was a painter of finely crafted marine pictures in the Dutch realist manner. He was chiefly interested in the fashionable art of depicting storm-tossed ships off rocky coasts, but few biographical details about him are known. Although little survives that is readily identifiable, Leiden inventories indicate that he was a highly prolific artist. His work was rediscovered in the 1950s and stylistically he resembles Jan Porcellis, Pieter Mulier, and Simon de Vlieger and Jacob Bellevois. The painting has been signed by the artist with the monogram 'H S T' and is dated '1655'.