1. in what area is critique to be sought?
Composition and lighting.
2. what one hopes to achieve with the piece of work?
Capture the serene scenery.
3. under what circumstance is the picture taken? (physical conditions/emotions)
Taken at about 9pm and there was almost no light source.
4. what the critique seeker personally thinks of the picture
I feel that i captured the boats well but yet there is something lacking...
It is good that you feel that your picture is lacking. This is the first step to improving. The stuff I am going to say here is my opinion and how I would like the picture to look. But do know that it is quite subjective sometimes. A lot depends on what you are trying to achieve here.
Technical Execution
Horizon seems level and verticals seems straight. Which is good.
As for exposure I think it is ok, although some of the spot lights near the shoreline are blown. But to lower the exposure to get those in line, you would have totally underexposed your POI (point of interest) which is the jetty and the boats.
I do notice there are quite a few ghosting ( bright dots in the middle of the sky) due to the strong spot lights. If you shot this picture with your UV or protector filter on, you shouldn't. For night photography please remove all unnecessary filters. If no filters, then you have to start moving your camera angle around so that the ghosts lights will disappear. Third way is to clone them away in PP.
I though WB is fine contrary to the other CSer who mentioned a tungsten WB be used. Problem with using Tungsten WB is that the lighting here is complex. There are all sorts of ligths in this picture. If you do tungsten, you will make everything an eerie blue. Unless when trying to achieve a special look, this should be avoided.
Composition and Idea.
I am trying very hard to read what your idea is for this shot. Sure it is a simple shot of a jetty with boats. But nothing in this picture really suggest that it is 1) Calm nor is it 2) a river. There are just about a thousand lights in the horizon, all casting reflections on the water. And the choice of short shutter speed and the reflections showed all the details of the waves. Not calm.
Also the way you chose to compose the frame. You gave so much weight to the sky, which is very uninteresting. Causing the entire picture to be unbalanced. The end of the jetty is also too close to the edge of the frame. And angle of the jetty is not very desirable as it 'cut's the frame across. Some of us call that a "slashing diagonal".
How to improve this shot
Pretty much you have to reshoot this frame. Personally I would close down the aperture, go for hyerfocal distance focusing, use some NDs maybe and shoot it long exposure to smooth out the waters. I would also go for another angle of the jetty, try to get it extending into the frame. I would also shoot this picture during the blue hour during sunset.
hope this helps.