One of the first Lumiere brothers shorts, this is simply a shot of a boat coming in to harbor. Like the infamous train coming in to the station it's all about how the effect is on the audience watching it. There may not be something remarkable to some about a train or a boat moving forward, or there may be everything remarkable about it. These are two things that grew more prominent and with greater functionality in the industrial age, and these were two of the things that these brothers found fascinating to use in order do display this thing called moving images.
Here the significance is less about the for 1896 3D aspect of it all (it's a train coming, run!) than it is about scale. The people are on the lower part of the frame as the rest of it is filled up by the giant ship that is coming in to harbor. From how it fills the composition it could be the Titanic for all we know; it keeps going and going, and because we don't get what's traditionally called a "Wide shot" to see all of the action, we're caught in the sense of 'how long can this thing be?' It is what it is, but what it is stands for a great piece of film history that exemplifies in just under a minute how to put your people into a moving image and for the size of something, the contrast, to add some weight and dimension and even drama to what's going on (i.e. the opening shot of Star Wars for example).
