When Willem van de Velde was sixty-two, King Charles II refused to allow him to continue risking his life at sea. Yet even on shore this artist never stopped drawing and painting ships. A contemporary noted: "[H]e had a Model of the Masts and Tackle of a Ship always before him." Van de Velde's father was a seaman, but little is known of his early life. He moved to Amsterdam in 1636 and traveled wi
