Monday 9 April 1660

Annotations

• N Emilio on Wed 9 Apr 2003, 11:16pm

  “great rattling of guns”
  One thing I’ve wondered since the last great salute: I’ve always had a romantic picture of the cannon booming away extra ammunition into the sea, but it seems this would be:
  a) hazardous to any nearby shipping, and
  b) a great waste of munitions.
  So is my suspicion correct that for these displays the cannon are loaded w/ nothing more than powder?
  

• N qB on Thu 10 Apr 2003, 12:07am

  North and South Foreland are familiar names to listeners of the shipping forecast on BBC radio since they give their name to the adjacent sea area.

  The 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica has this to say:

  FORELAND, NORTH and SOUTH, two chalk headlands on the Kent coast of England, overlooking the Strait of Dover, the North Foreland forming the eastern projection of the Isle of Thanet, and the,South standing 3 m. N.E. of Dover. Both present bold cliffs to the sea, and command beautiful views over the strait. On the North Foreland (51

• N steve h on Thu 10 Apr 2003, 12:37am

  Danger on the sands

  The Goodwin sands! That notorious peril — Shepley’s not the only (near)victim. There’s even a book called “Shipwrecks of the Goodwin Sands” (Meresborough). Apparently there have been over 1,000 wrecks there since the 16th century.
  Here’s the blurb:

  “At the point where the English Channel narrows to less than twenty miles lies a series of sandbanks known as the Goodwin Sands. Seafarers of all nations have for centuries lived in fear of this natural obstruction whose infamous reputation is unrivalled anywhere in the world.”
  http://www.cantweb.co.uk/books/albion/books/shipwrecks.html

• N Simon Fodden on Thu 10 Apr 2003, 02:04am

  “great rattling of guns”

  Emilio, I think they simply didn’t put shot into the cannon — just gunpowder and wadding, and although the wadding could fly pretty far and give you a good scrape, it wasn’t really dangerous.

  Mind you, I stand to be corrected by a real naval person. Everything I know, which is enough to fill a walnut shell ship, I learned from the fantastic Patrick O’Brian novels, which take place a good century later.

• N Pauline on Thu 10 Apr 2003, 02:59am

  “…to the Castles about Deal.”
  Googling around and being disabused of reading this as meaning all the ships flocked there—as in castle, a “small tower, as on a ship.” Remnants in fo’c’sle (forecastle).

  However:

• N steve h on Thu 10 Apr 2003, 03:17am

  Deal castle still stands

  Pauline, your page has a link to it. Pictures included.

  http://www.heritage.me.uk/castles/deal.htm

• N Pauline on Thu 10 Apr 2003, 06:06am

  Thank you, Steve
  A picture is worth a thousand “it looks like”s.

  These castles look like (oh oh) forerunners of the Martello Towers.

• N Mary on Thu 10 Apr 2003, 08:11am

  Nore or North

  L&M’s reading ‘North’ makes much the best sense in this context; The Nore is a sandbank in the Thames Estuary, 3 miles east of Sheerness, now far astern of our vessel.

• N Mik on Thu 10 Apr 2003, 11:43am

  Rattling of Guns. I have to say when I first read the phrase I thought of small-arms which I can imagine being fired in large enough quantities to sound like a rattle and being set off in large numbers. Unlike cannon which take more time to reload and, as observed, are expensive to fire but would rattle anything loose

• N steve glover on Thu 10 Apr 2003, 11:46am

  “great rattling of guns”

  This is the “dumb show” that O’Brian refers to (captains were limited in the amount of powder they could use, and hence if they wanted to train their gunners well, tey’d have to buy extra powder).

  Basically the whole sequence of actions from removing the tompions until the guns were rolled back (in action the recoil would’ve done this) was carried out with no actual powder or shot.

• N mcewen on Thu 10 Apr 2003, 12:19pm

  Fine example of second sight:
  “Nor could we see one another […] for the smoke that was among us.”

• N Emilio on Thu 10 Apr 2003, 03:09pm

  Dumb show
  Oh dear, this has just made things more muddled for me. If there was no powder, could there be actual explosions? If so, how? If not, where did all the rattling and the smoke come from?
  

• N tjcjr on Thu 10 Apr 2003, 03:56pm

• N M.Stolzenbach on Thu 10 Apr 2003, 04:24pm

  Trying to clear up the confusion - the guns would “rattle” anyway from being run in and out, but would only “shout” and give off smoke if powder were used.

  In O’Brian’s novels (which are actually set more than 100 years later, in the Napoleonic Wars), the captain would sometimes, if I recall, practice without powder, as Steve Glover says, on the other parts of the process. But to give a salute, of course powder had to be used.

• N Mary on Thu 10 Apr 2003, 05:39pm

  the shout of guns

  Very stirring, but unfortunately L&M transcribe this more prosaically as ‘shot of guns’.

  Dickering becomes Pickering in L&M, hence the link.

• N Emilio on Thu 10 Apr 2003, 06:36pm

  the sho(u)t of guns
  Interesting … I don’t have my copy of L&M in front of me (just arrived a few days ago … thank you again DQ, wherever you are!), but from the intro I believe a transcriber wouldn’t be able to distinguish “shout” and “shot” in Pepys’s shorthand. The vowels weren’t actually written, just represented by the position of the consonant that came after. For this word, Pepys would write a symbol for the “sh” and write the symbol for the “t” below and to the right, signifying that a vowel based on “o” would come between. This vowel, however, could be “o,” “oa”, “ou,” etc.
  If Pepys had been feeling poetic, he could have written the word in longhand to make that clear, but that could have given the word more emphasis than he intended. Short of having that guide, we have to pay our money, take our chances, and go w/ whichever interpretation seems more likely in context.
  

• N helena murphy on Thu 10 Apr 2003, 10:03pm

  The firing of canon, widespread in the 17th century was the harbinger of celebratory events both on land and sea. It was the aural backdrop to extravagant displays involving also the unfurling of vast magnificent flags. It was all indicative of the century,s love of rich ceremonial. No money was spared in the pursuit of show. IN 1626 the Royal Navy spent 1280 pounds on flags in preference to paying salaries. The “Prince Royal”, the largest English warship of the early 17th century carried no fewer than seventy flags of various sizes. In 1628 the English squadron at Plymouth according to an eyewitness “shot away 100 pounds of powder in one day in drinking healths”. Vast sums were also spent on decoration, gilding and carving warships. On the political level Charles II revived the ancient belief that the crown of England claimed sovereignty of the seas
  and expected foreign ships to recognise this in the form of a salute on sighting a British ship.

  The firing of canon was also evident in the previous century as the following lines show.

  This gentle and unforced accord of Hamlet
  Sits smiling to my heart, in grace whereof
  No jocund health that Denmark drinks today,
  But the great canon to the clouds shall tell,
  And the King’s rouse the heaven shall bruit again,
  Respeaking earthly thunder.”

  Hamlet I.II.l-123-128

• N Nix on Thu 10 Apr 2003, 10:15pm

  “Shout” vs. “shot”:

  From Emilio’s explication of the shorthand, I’m inclined to think that “shout” is the correct reading. It fits better in the expression — “great was the shout” vs. “great was the shot” — as well as with the successing phrase — “and our answers”. And somehow, to me at least it seems to fit with Samuel’s mode of expression.

• N Tyler Carder on Thu 10 Apr 2003, 11:16pm

  “the smoke that was among us”

  Anyone who has ignited any black powder (which I am guessing was the explosive material that actually propelled the shot out the barrel of the guns on the ships of Sam’s day) knows it creates a tremendous amount of smoke; so undoubtedly the guns were primed and loaded (perhaps with quarter- or half-charges of powder but obviously, without shot) and fired, creating the smoke that cloaked the ships. In later years, it was not uncommon to have dedicated signaling cannon aboard ships; perhaps this was the case back then. Or maybe they just ran out the big guns, which would make a tremndous noise themselves.

  A cannon would be loaded “run in” and when ready to fire would be pulled outboard by means of blocks and tackles (“run out the guns and show our teeth!”) When fired, the guns would jerk backwards violently and be brought to a stop by the same blocks and tackles that were used to run them out. Even without the guns being fired, the creaking of the blocks as they manipulated the very heavy guns, the guns’ wooden wheels squeaking…it must have been deafening. And then the staccato tattoo of the firing of the guns! Sam’s lovely phrase “Great was the shout of guns…” sums it up perfectly.

  Usually naval ships at anchor would salute with guns any other naval ship that might happen along; and if there happened to be important personages aboard any of the ships (admirals, ministers, etc.) it would require a longer salute (greater number of guns fired). Perhaps other readers can fill us in on the formal signaling protocol of the Navy of 1660. In any case, as it did with Sam, the saluting could go on for quite a long time. Imagine a whole fleet of ships at anchor, all saluting at once.

  One assumes that Sam’s ship had come to anchor before everybody shot their wads, so to speak, else someone must have been conning the ship through the smoke from up the rigging! Sam mentions a fresh gale blowing ealier in the day; perhaps it calmed down in the late afternoon, or it just wasn’t blowing as hard at the Goodwin; else wouldn’t all the cannon smoke have been blown away? But in a calm, the smoke is heavy and hangs around (and smells wonderfully!)

• N Martin Richards on Fri 11 Apr 2003, 10:25am

  Re Goodwin Sands
  Last night’s Wreck Detectives on Channel 4 (UK-based TV channel) looked at the Stirling Castle, lost on the Goodwin Sands in the Great Storm of 1703. Our boy Sam got a mention - but that was just as the kids came home, so I didn’t catch much more :-(

  There’s a piece on Pepys’ involvement on the C4 site at http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/W/wreck_detectives/the_wrecks/the_stirling_castle/history.html Warning: likely to contain spoilers ;-)

• N wembley on Fri 11 Apr 2003, 09:27pm

  All these salutes could be dangerous!
  The East India Company recorded several occasions when guns loaded with live ammo were accidentally used for saluting, sometimes with fatal results. They tried to stop the practice but it was too popular.

  Ref: The Honourable Company by John Keay