Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
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Allin; his career to 1660
Allin (1612-1685) turned 48 years old in 1660. He was a consistant royalist and had quite a successful naval career.
In the 1640s, he was a merchant-shipowner in Lowestoft. In 1644 (the year he turned 32) he became a privateer for the King, serving under Rupert as a captain of a frigate.
Pepys says at one point in the diary that Allin loves money, and he died with quite a lot of it. His journals have been published.
— L&M Companion volume
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He was also in some of the battles at the time.
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Allin’s portrait by Lely
http://www.nmm.ac.uk/mag/pages/mnuExplore/PaintingDetail.cfm?lettera=&ID=BHC2512&name=Sir%20Peter%20Lely&action=ArtistTitle -
Allin and The Nonsuch
It is clear that at this time there are two ships, the Nonsutch warship and the Nonsuch Ketch, and that one of them ran aground in Gibraltar Bay when in a fleet commanded by Allin.
Allin received his commission for the Plymouth in June of 1664, and presumably he is starting on his mission to conclude a peace treaty in Algiers. He sailed from the Thames in the company of the London, which was the flag ship of Sandwich, and mentions that he sailed with 11 men-of-war and a smack. A note is added to this saying the Nonsuch Ketch with Captain Country to follow us and a smack to sound before us. The 11 ships became part of Sandwich’s squadron, and Sandwich in his journal says on the 3rd of August says that Country’s ketch sailed for Holland with his letters. Also on the 13th September he records in his company the Nonsuch Ketch.
Allin made his way to meet Lawson in the Straights. He was at Plymouth on the night of the 22nd of August and I believe that he was accompanied by a number of merchantmen, among them the London Merchant and the Naples Merchant, and no warships are named on the journey.
On the 18th September he dined with Lawson, and on the 24th there is the first mention of the Nonsuch being under the command of Captain Parker. The Phoenix is mentioned on the 8th October under Chichley. These ships appear to have already been in the Straights under Lawson, who will now make his way back to England leaving the command to Allin.
After concluding the peace he patrolled the Straights, and on the 2nd of December gives a detailed description of events after a continual rainy night that he ever saw in his life. In the morning within musket shot were four of the fleet ashore. Allin managed to get off and also the Portsmouth, but the Nonsuch sunk and all masts by the board and the Phoenix by her sunk. All help was sent to preserve the Bonaventure.
They regrouped at Malaga on the 8th went back to Gibraltar by the 11th to speak with the men left aboard the Nonsuch and the Phoenix but the Governor would not let them cross the neck of land and had to go by sea to provide the seamen with enough money to last a month.
As there was another warship called the Nonsuch built in 1668, and from the information above, I believe that it was the warship that was sunk and not the Ketch.
(Information gained from the Allin and Sandwich Journals both edited by RC Anderson)
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Per L&M Companion:
1st. Bt. (1612 - 85). One of the most active and successful naval commanders of the Second Dutch War. A merchant-shipowner of Lowestoft, he turned to privateering on the King’s side in 1644 and served as captain of a frigate under Rupert. It was his unprovoked attack on the Dutch Smyrna fleet of Cadiz in December 1664 which sparked of the war, during which he served with distinction as a flag-officer. His service afloat ended with two expeditions to the Mediterranean, 1668-9, in which he imposed terms upon the Barbary states. He had been at sea almost continuously for ten years, and had held eleven commissions as a captain since 1660.
On Mennes’s death he was made Comptroller of the Navy (1671-80). In that capacity he came in for some criticism from Pepys for ‘very unsteady measures’ in paying for wages. But he was an experienced colleague and took part in the special conference which lead in 1677 to one of Pepys’s most important reforms — the establishment of examinations for lieutenants. He was Master of Trinity House, 1671-2, and was briefly Commander-in-Chief in the Channel in 1678. In 1680 he retired to his native Suffolk. The love of money, which Pepys remarks on, is witnessed by his will which shows him possessed of considerable landed wealth. The baronetcy died out with his son in 1696. His journals have been published.
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From C.S. Knighton, Pepys and the Navy, Sutton, 2003:
Allin had a distinguished career afloat, beginning as a royalist privateer captain operating out of his native Lowestoft at the start of the Civil War. After 1648 he had served in the official royalist fleet until he was sunk by Blake off Cartagena in 1650. He was court-martialled by his own side for cowardice, but escaped before sentence was passed. His loyalty was unshaken, and he was regarded as one of the most reliable officers by Charles II, from whom he received a succession of commands after the Restoration. He had enthusiastically carried out the secret orders to attack the Dutch Smyrna fleet in 1664, and had a fine record in the war which this action successfully provoked. Pepys … encountered him in November 1665 and found him “very friendly … a good man I think but one that professes he loves to get and to save.” Interestingly, Allin records the same meeting in his official journal, but more prosaically (“dined with Squire Pepys and did some business with him”).