Elbing had during the heyday of the Hanseatic League more maritime business than Danzig or Gdansk. It was an important Eastland trading company harbor city, and tradesmen from England and Scotland moved to Elbing and received Elbing citizenship. Some became councilmen and mayors.
The elaborate gravesites at the Elbing St. Mary's church and stories of these Eastland Elbing traders had been immortalized in a booklet with photos, proving their existence, taken in the 20th century. Nearly all pre-1945 Elbing citizens records have been destroyed or hidden and the gravesites have been bulldozed by the people who took over in 1945 and renamed the city Elblag.
The imperial mapmaker Johann Friedrich Endersch of Elbing documented this sailing ship in a copper-etching.
Die Stadt Elbing was in 1679 illustrated in a copper etching by Prussian historian and educator Christoph Hartknoch.