Sunday 9 December 1660

Annotations

• N vincent on Wed 10 Dec 2003, 12:05am

  From yesterday .. the great wind.. to-day “… I rose ….the ill news that he had this morning from Woolwich, that the Assurance (formerly Captain Holland

• N vincent on Wed 10 Dec 2003, 12:29am

  “…I found my mother below, stairs and pretty well….” curious below (,)
  I wonder if thats a scan blip?

• N Jesse on Wed 10 Dec 2003, 12:51am

  “…sunk down to the bottom” in 1660 and “sold in 1698”?
  Hmmm, I suspect the website reference. Also, 1698 would’ve been a rather late date to sell a ship of that vintage.

• N Alan Bedford on Wed 10 Dec 2003, 01:22am

  Mr. Kennard (Thomas Kinward) was quickly developing a reputation as a joiner.

  He became master joiner to the architect Christopher Wren. There are some addiotional notes at his People link.

• N Rick Ansell on Wed 10 Dec 2003, 02:09am

  If you look at some of the other ships on the list 45 years between building and sale out of the service doesn’t seem so unusual. For example we have the St George, built 1622, hulked 1687 and the James, built 1634, sold 1682.

  Remember in those days the fleet would spend the winters laid up and refitting. Every year any unsound timbers etc. would be replaced in an ongoing maintenance program which probably meant that very little of the original material remained when the ship ended its days.

  As a benchmark, the current HMS Victory was afloat for 157 years, has been commissioned for 204 and was an active warship for 30. A number of other wooden warships are still around and afloat after 200 years

• N David Quidnunc on Wed 10 Dec 2003, 02:44am

  “… my mother below, stairs …”

  That comma is not in the L&M edition of the diary. So, yes, maybe a scanning error.

• N JBailey on Wed 10 Dec 2003, 02:59am

  Am I correct that “below stairs” means being on the ground floor? In other words, assuming the comma is a typo, his mother had been ill upstairs in her bedroom with her stone and now that she is well, she has come downstairs to the ground floor room where everyone eats and socializes?

• N David Quidnunc on Wed 10 Dec 2003, 06:34am

  Weather Report from Essex

  “… the winter hitherto very mild, and dry …”

  — Diary of Ralph Josselin,
  Tuesday 9 December 1660
  http://linux02.lib.cam.ac.uk/earlscolne//diary/70012815.htm

  So, how different is the variation between the weather in Essex and London? Anyone out there with friends or relatives in both places who can offer a comparison?

  Josselin, by the way, is a rural vicar, said to be pretty reliable in his diary, which he writes in about twice a week at this time. And it’s all online.
  

• N Hic retearivs on Wed 10 Dec 2003, 06:43am

  Realities for “Assurance”.

  Depending of species of wood and latitude, a wooden vessel which has had minimum maintenance has seen her prime after twenty years or so. Vessels in commercial service, where business considerations drove maintenance, would probably be sold for some lesser purpose (tramping, barge, hulk) after twenty years of life or so. Those who wish to follow up will find a modern and very sad example in the life cycle of the original “Bluenose” though she retained her vitality better than some; she was positively elderly when she beat the Americans yet again in the last series of races.

  The situation in the Royal Navy was quite different. There manpower and expertise were plentiful. Overmanning was huge in the Royal Navy. As has been noted above, such a vessel was under relentless, minute, maintenance; a situation quite different from the sorry reality for commercial vessels where purchasing a newly built vessel for prime service probably made more business sense than the bleeding sore of endless maintenance. In the R.N. in it

• N Grahamt on Wed 10 Dec 2003, 07:04am

  Essex and London.
  Nowadays Essex is almost a suburb of London, but in Pepys’ time would have been quite rural.
  Being north east and east of London, Essex would to some extent be sheltered from the prevailing south-westerly winds, at the cost of getting London’s pollution blown over it.
  I believe the reference to a mild dry winter doesn’t rule out high winds. In fact a strong south-westerly gale will often raise the temperature in winter as it brings in warm air from the Gulf stream.

• N Charlezzzzz on Wed 10 Dec 2003, 07:05am

  Captain Holland’s ship
  This was the Holland Pepys met with on March 8 to ask how to profit by going to sea, “which he told me might be by having of five or six servants entered on board, and I to give them what wages I pleased, and so their pay to be mine.”

• N Grahamt on Wed 10 Dec 2003, 07:08am

  Re: Realities for

• N Hic retearivs on Wed 10 Dec 2003, 09:17am

• N J A Gioia on Wed 10 Dec 2003, 01:39pm

  …by a gust of wind sunk down to the bottom. Twenty men drowned.

  the loss of twenty men in a salvagable vessel, probably close to shore, points to another reality of seafaring until fairly recent times. sailors didn’t know how to swim.

• N Andrew Hamilton on Wed 10 Dec 2003, 06:59pm

  “and among other things he showed me a design of his, by the King

• N Rick Ansell on Thu 11 Dec 2003, 12:40am

  Just a note on ‘Overmanning’. This, I assume, refers to overmanning relative to a commercial ship. Warships were (and are) manned to fight, that means that there has to be sufficient crew to fight the guns with enough left over to sail the vessel in battle. Thus a warship would have had many times the number of crew a commercial vessel of similar size and design would have had, far more than would have been needed simply to sail her around the place.
  

• N Charlezzzzz on Thu 11 Dec 2003, 04:07am

  About the enduring RN
  dichotomy between

• N Jenny Doughty on Thu 11 Dec 2003, 02:26pm

  And remember Gilbert and Sullivan’s advice in HMS Pinafore:

  ‘Stick close to your desks and never go to sea
  And you all may be rulers of the Queen’s navee…’

  Very satirical in its day.

• N Mary on Thu 11 Dec 2003, 03:29pm

  The subsequent manning of warships

  On 28th October 1664, an Order in Council authorised the founding of The Duke of York’s Maritime Regiment of Foot (later known as The Admiral’s Regiment), the earliest formation of the body that was to become The Royal Marines. These men acted as both soldiers and seamen; they were paid by The Admiralty and were to become part of the complement of all warships.

• N David Quidnunc on Tue 16 Dec 2003, 09:03pm

  William Penn and the Assurance

  That ship that Penn is going to examine this day is one he’s familiar with. In 1648, two years after it was built, Penn “was made Rear Admiral of the Irish Fleet on the Assurance.”

  http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~rstephen/livingeaston/local_history/Penn/Penn_family_part_2.html

• N David Quidnunc on Tue 16 Dec 2003, 10:16pm

  Same day(?), similar event — same challenges?

  This December 9, in the Hudson River port of Albany, New York, a cargo ship registered in the Netherlands Antilles sunk. Three crew members who were in the open-air cargo bay are still missing. Fifteen survived.

  “Authorities believe the three men are either buried in a debris field inside the ship, crushed underneath it or lost somewhere downriver,” according to the Albany Times-Union.
  http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=199157&category=REGION&BCCode=HOME&newsdate=12/15/2003

  “Still connected to the docks by several mooring lines, the ship slowly tipped onto its port side — a process that witnesses said took about a minute as sailors clung to its sides or swam for their lives.”
  http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=198711&category=REGIONOTHER&BCCode=HOME&newsdate=12/13/2003

  “Even if dressed for winter weather, a person in near-freezing water has only a short time to survive, doctors said. ‘You’re talking about minutes before you lose the ability to keep yourself above water,’” one doctor said. No crew members suffered hypothermia, which another doctor estimated would have set in within 10 minutes, even if the water was as high as 40 degrees F (about 5 degrees Celsius). The water was at the freezing point that day.
  http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=197541&category=ALBANY&BCCode=&newsdate=12/16/2003
  

• N David Quidnunc on Tue 16 Dec 2003, 10:24pm

  Correction to above annotation

  The cargo bay was described as being gymnasium-size without a roof, which is not quite “open air.”

• N Charlezzzzz on Wed 17 Dec 2003, 03:14am

  Here’s a guess. Maybe the Stellamare sank herself. She was a heavy lift ship, and her central hold was enormous. (You can Google her up.) Even the hold on an ordinary bulk freighter is amazingly large: but this one is unbelievable. She was loading a generator weighing 308 tons.
  It took two of her cranes, working together, to lift it. Note that it wasn’t dockside cranes doing the loading: it was the ship’s own cranes.
  Now it’s untested assumption time:
  If one or both cranes suddenly went haywire and swung the load fully outboard on the river side…
  If the ship was “light,” without much cargo, fuel, or ballast so it was riding high in the water in order to get to her dock far upriver…
  If the cranes and their far-from-the-fulcrum load were enough to roll the ship past the point where she cd recover, then Bob’s your uncle and she’d go over fast and as easily as the Assurance may have done

• N Pedro on Tue 31 Oct 2006, 12:13pm

  Manning in the Navy.

  Hic says above…

  “The situation in the Royal Navy was quite different. There manpower and expertise were plentiful. Overmanning was huge in the Royal Navy.”

  I am sure he is refering to the prestige jobs such as Captain, Boatswains, Chaplins, Surgeons, Pursers, Caprpenters and other jobs. The position of the actual seamen was different especially in times of war, where they were forced from merchant vessels into the navy, pressed or turned round before reaching shore.
  

• N JonTom Kittredge on Tue 31 Oct 2006, 06:13pm

  Manning in the Navy
  I thought that large navy crews (compared to merchantment) were due to the need to have enough to man the guns (while simultaneously sailing the ship). When not in battle (or drilling), all these men were available for extra work (indeed, keeping them occupied was seen as a necessity).

• N cum salis grano on Tue 31 Oct 2006, 09:26pm

  Manning of ships for war: Many of lessers were pressed into service [not many volunteers for scrubbing decks and pushing and shoving of canon and manning the rigging, pay not that good] when under the influence of strong ale: yes, they be over manned, as many would be sent over board when no longer breathing. The “Staff” and tars, two versions of homo: erectus, and sapiens. The staff would vie for the jobs, as they could get government benefits of getting pay of those that failed to complete the required impressment and then sell off the excess weavils that be available at the end of the voyage.
  Like most militarized organisations, they be run by senior noncoms, [warranted] with a few seasoned commissioned types. [See how how they failed to capture the lands of Dominca and lucked out with Jamaica.]
  When the powers to be, fail to notice that it be the chief clerks that run the show, they lose, [Stalin made that goof, as well as many others not worth mentioning].
  N. B. Sam be the real organiser here, and that this is the real story, if Sam was not as capable as he is, then the story of the British Empire could have been different.
  Organisations fail when the going gets tough and it is left to all the likeable ones [i.e. old school and family] to run the show as they have removed the competent ones from rising rising to the level of imcompetence..
  Fortunately or Nature working to plan there be exceptions to all these opinions.
  Read up on John Evelyn on the benefits that old salts and squaddies received when no longer fit to carry pail or musket]

• N Pedro on Wed 1 Nov 2006, 10:23am

  Manning of the Navy.

  Adding to the discussion above “Gentlemen and Tarpaulins” by J. D. Davies gives the following information. Here is a summary…

  
  The compliment of a warship could vary according to the area in which it was deployed and the state of international affairs: official establishments therefore laid down distinct compliments for peacetime and war at home and war abroad. In this way the compliment of the same fourth rate could vary from 150 in peacetime to 280 in wartime service against the Dutch. A first rate in wartime would require up to 800 men to man her, and a third rate, even in peacetime, would require 300…

  Captains and Lieutenants held their commissions as long as their ships were in service, which could be weeks to many years. There were warrants for Master, Boatswain, Gunner, Carpenter, Purser, Cook, Chaplain and Surgeon. The Master, Chaplain and Surgeon, like the commissioned officers served only for the duration of active service, while the others continued to serve when their ships were laid up in harbour. These “standing officers” formed the basis of the skeleton crew which guarded and maintained the ships when they lay in the “ordinary.” This was the ordinary condition for much of the fleet in peacetime…

  The great majority of the King’s ships remained in harbour with their masts and guns removed. The Ordinary provided continuous employment for men who would otherwise have had to sever their connections with the service…

  Coventry said “The greatest difficulty and vexation in a war was the manning of the ships.”

  During war up to 25,000 men had to be brought into service within a matter of weeks, and got to the fleet and retained for the duration of the campaign without disrupting the trade of the nation…

  By the time of the Restoration the majority of seamen, both volunteers and pressed, were drawn from the East coast…40 to 50,000 were in deep sea and coastal trades and therefore in war time the navy could be calling on between one third and a half of the maritime community of the nation…

  In peacetime there was usually enough volunteers to man the 3 to 4,000 berths available, but not in war.

  (Spoiler from Sam’s Tangier Papers?)

  Whether volunteered or pressed the seamen generally numbered among the lowest orders of society for in Pepys’ view the unpleasant nature of their job restricted it to “poor illiterate hands.”

• N Pedro on Sun 27 Jan 2008, 05:24pm

  Thomas Allin on this day…

  “About 3 of the clock we were off Reggio, a town upon the Calabria side, and about 6 of the clock we got athwart Etna or Mongibello, which burneth continually. We saw the smoke of it perfectly, the wind then at NW, a fresh gale.”

  (The Journal of Sir Thomas Allin edited by RC Anderson)