Tuesday 3 April 1660

Annotations

• N M Wright on Fri 4 Apr 2003, 12:15am

  Perhaps Sam’s penchant for strong drink in his cabin during the evenings made waking him such a difficult task at 3 in the morning.

• N Emilio on Fri 4 Apr 2003, 12:16am

  “Hastings, one of the Cinque Ports”
  How interesting that Sam would specially note this. Right now Sam is getting his ‘sea legs’ in more ways than one, as far as the naval life goes. This brief comment has really driven that home for me for the first time.
  

• N JudyB on Fri 4 Apr 2003, 12:24am

  I have never heard of so many goings and comings happening on one ship within such a short period of time. Are they at anchor? Moving very slowly so that visitors can keep up by traveling by land? This ship seems to be more of a stationary hotel than a means of transportation.

• N Warren Keith Wright on Fri 4 Apr 2003, 12:28am

  It seems worth mentioning with this entry that while there was an Edward Wood who was an alderman, this William Wood was in fact a timber merchant and mast-maker from Wapping. (In later years, when he often partnered with Surveyor of the Navy Sir William Batten, Pepys disliked their joint monopolist tendencies. Cf. Companion entries.)
  Since their marriage in late 1655, Samuel and Elizabeth had been separated before, when in May 1659 he journeyed to the Baltic with letters for Mountagu; but now the unsettled state of the state makes his dismay at being apart even stronger than then.
  

• N David Quidnunc on Fri 4 Apr 2003, 01:55am

  “to get convoy to the Baltique”

  — for protection against pirates?

  The L&M index volume has no listing for “pirates,” so apparently the word never enters the diary.

  There were concerns about pirates on the Dutch coast. In an official diary of a trip to Holland as ambassasdor, George Downing (Pepys’s Exchequer boss) mentions the danger of pirates at the mouth of the Maas, the river that leads to Rotterdam. [11 Jan. 1657/8 entry; quoted in John Beresford’s “Godfather of Downing Street,” p 85]

• N Alan on Fri 4 Apr 2003, 05:04am

  There’s something about a boat that makes me, at least, sleep like a log. Constant motion which the body has to adapt to is subtle excercise; sun, wind all take their toll, not to mention the wine and dinner as stated.

• N Mary on Fri 4 Apr 2003, 07:59am

  The Downs

  An area of sea lying between the Thames Estuary and the Straits of Dover, protected by the Goodwin Sands from easterlies and by the land mass of Kent from westerlies. Hence a favoured (and often very crowded) holding point for merchant shipping that was awaiting a favourable wind for an outward voyage.

• N Sue on Fri 4 Apr 2003, 12:33pm

  Why was Pepys so apprehensive of Mrs Pepys’ absence today?

• N mary on Fri 4 Apr 2003, 05:18pm

  my heart was so apprehensive of her absence

  In this context, Pepys is most probably saying that his heart was particularly conscious of, or sensible to, his wife’s absence on this particular day. He’s suddenly missing her a great deal, has had no news from her and thinks to comment on the fact.

  Although the modern use of apprehensive almost invariably involves an idea of fear or foreboding, this was not necessarily the case in 17th Century usage.

• N Hhomeboy on Fri 4 Apr 2003, 06:39pm

  a worriesome heart…

  One can be worried by a lack of news of or from a loved one without fearing the worst—true then, true now.

  There are quite a couple of now obsolete uses for ‘apprehend’ but this isn’t one of them.

• N Mary on Fri 4 Apr 2003, 06:56pm

  apprehensive heart again

  Hhomeboy’s statement notwithstanding, the OED gives authority for a reading of ‘conscious of, sensible to’ for apprehensive.