Monday 6 March 1664/65

Annotations

• N Pedro on Thu 6 Mar 2008, 11:04pm

  On this day Allin is on his way to Blighty and is near Cape Roca…

  “About 2 o’clock we fired a gun, showed our lights and tryed with our main course and mizzen. A very hard gale of wind. About 8 o’clock we spied a ship to the leeward standing with his larboard tack aboard firing guns, a weft with his ancient and one upon his main topmast stay. Captain Clarke bore up first, I after him. Making it to be Captain Talbot (in a merchantman) we lay as near him as we durst, the sea being very deep, and we saw him bailing and pumping, the sea making a passage over him. At length we saw his longboat on his tackles and presently full of men and put off. We hauled our mainsail aback and lay for them and took them aboard, the men very much spent and much ado to get into the ship. They let the longboat drive being very leaky. They left a dozen men, the Master being on board. Half hour after they put out their wherry and very dangerously came aboard, the Master, 8 men and a woman with child. We had much ado to save the Master, being overboard between the ship and the wherry, but saved all them. We let go the wherry to save the men and the woman and saw no opportunity to save 2 seamen, an old soldier and an old woman left aboard. Bore up and came to our starboard tack…We left Captain Clarke hovering about him, but I could not perceive that he sent his boat to save them. The water increased 8 inches in the half hour the men forsook the Master, so gave them over for lost. We saw the ship swim until noon upon our poop and presently not to be seen on the main top, so judged her gone down.”

  (Journals of Sir Thomas Acton edited by Anderson)

• N Terry Foreman on Thu 6 Mar 2008, 11:04pm

  “It troubles me more to think of his venture, than of anything else in the whole warr.”

  SPOILER: Pepys’s multifaceted attachment to the DoY is his future.

• N Pedro on Thu 6 Mar 2008, 11:13pm

  “It troubles me more to think of his venture, than of anything else in the whole warr.”

  Times are changing, it used to be his patron Sandwich he was worried about.
  

• N Pedro on Thu 6 Mar 2008, 11:20pm

  Errata, should read…

  The Journals of Sir Thomas Allin edited by Anderson.

• N Terry Foreman on Thu 6 Mar 2008, 11:22pm

  Cape Roca

  This Yank had forgot that part of his geography (thanks for the reminder, Pedro)

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabo_da_Roca

• N Robert Gertz on Fri 7 Mar 2008, 12:11am

  “To my office, where busy late, and then home to supper and to bed, and was troubled all this night with a pain in my left testicle, that run up presently into my left kidney and there kept akeing all night. In great pain.”

  The only question being…Was it Bess or Mary who kicked said testicle?
  

• N Australian Susan on Fri 7 Mar 2008, 01:07am

  “…troubled all this night with a pain in my left testicle, that run up presently into my left kidney and there kept akeing all night. In great pain….”

  Orchitis?

  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchitis

• N Australian Susan on Fri 7 Mar 2008, 01:11am

  Thanks, Pedro for the Allin Journals. On a par with Conrad, Forester or O’Brien really.

• N Todd Bernhardt on Fri 7 Mar 2008, 02:10am

  “and so home, and there find our new chamber-mayde, Mary, come, which instead of handsome, as my wife spoke and still seems to reckon, is a very ordinary wench, I think, and therein was mightily disappointed.”

  Psych!!

  Oh Sam, you fool. Elizabeth’s got to be chortling up her sleeve…

• N CGS on Fri 7 Mar 2008, 03:59am

  interesting “…and gone away with the greatest ingratitude…”

• N Terry Foreman on Fri 7 Mar 2008, 04:07am

  “…and gone away with the greatest ingratitude…”

  Well, it’s been a job w/ free room & board; and she has also had the “greatest love and kindnesse and good clothes” that SP AND BP could offer.

  What a deal! (Sure, she too got an earful once in a while; what’s a servant for?)

• N Ruben on Fri 7 Mar 2008, 04:57am

  “was troubled all this night with a pain in my left testicle, that run up presently into my left kidney and there kept akeing all night. In great pain”

  This is what an MD will call “renal colic” in our day.
  The patient tries to pass a stone that can be very big (like the one Samuel had when operated) or small like grains of sand. When the stone gets staked, somewhere in the urinary tract, the upper part of the ureter or urethra (depending or where the stone obstructs) begins to swell and to contract (“colic movement”, like in the bowels) producing the typical pain that Samuel had. The effect on the autonomic system may also produce nausea and vomiting. When the stone passes, urine may have some blood in it. When the stones are very small you cannot see them, except with a microscope, like the one that was in Samuel’s cabinet!

• N Mary on Fri 7 Mar 2008, 11:16am

  “gone away with the greatest ingratitude…”

  Sam’s attitude has changed somewhat from the time when Elizabeth first complained about Besse and insisted that the maid had to go.

• N Robert Gertz on Fri 7 Mar 2008, 12:27pm

  “Great preparations for his speedy return to sea. I saw him try on his buff coat and hatpiece covered with black velvet.”

  Reminds me of those stories of early US Civil War soldiers running out to buy fancy uniforms before heading off to what would of course be glorious, bloodless, adventurous war. Ken Burns gives a nice tale of young George Custer getting all gussied-up and photographed. I wonder if the Duke had a portrait painter standing by.

• N language hat on Fri 7 Mar 2008, 03:23pm

  “This Yank had forgot that part of his geography (thanks for the reminder, Pedro)”

  Same here, and thanks from me as well.

• N JWB on Fri 7 Mar 2008, 03:34pm

  “buff coat”

  Gesture to the “Roundhead” Navy?

• N Mary on Fri 7 Mar 2008, 04:04pm

  A buff coat.

  This was a protective coat made of leather that was worn by the military.

  OED buff: properly, leather made of buffalo-hide; but usually applied to a very stout kind of leather made of ox-hide, dressed with oil, and having a characteristic fuzzy surface, and a dull, whitish-yellow colour.

  Our adjective ‘buff’ is taken from the colour of this material, not vice-versa.