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Nate Lockwood has posted 90 annotations/comments since 10 April 2013.

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Second Reading

About Friday 28 December 1666

Nate Lockwood  •  Link

YouTube has some videos showing some aspects of making and using rushlights/rush candles. A couple of months ago I saw one that showed the rushes being gathered and impregnated with fat.

There's a link below forr another, I've not actually reviewed it as I can't use the sound on my computer at present, but it has a good scene showing the light that is given off when burned correctly.

Folks in cities would probably have to buy the rushes as they couldn't harvest them nor would they have much available fat.

https://youtu.be/b_8bAZ_Lu40

About Sunday 23 December 1666

Nate Lockwood  •  Link

Thanks, Mary: "Mitchell himself could indeed have been in the coach. It is dark night, there will have been no light within the coach and precious little (if any) anywhere in the street. The weather is cold and snowy, so the chances are that the passengers are wearing long, winter cloaks whose folds might be used to conceal the assault. "

The coach also had curtains which surely would have been closed as it was cold and they had no need to show off, that is, to be seen. It would have been the kind of darkness we very seldom see in this age of light pollution.

About Wednesday 2 May 1666

Nate Lockwood  •  Link

Ahh, yes, Jonathan V. I imagine that Pepys would really be in the doghouse if the whole 'house' were to be shut up including the other residents!

About Wednesday 4 April 1666

Nate Lockwood  •  Link

The History Guy (THG) published a short video about John Evelyn today on YouTube. Describes who Evelyn was, his garden, and publication on trees, but zeros in on the occupation of his house by Peter The Great. Worth viewing.

About Sunday 11 February 1665/66

Nate Lockwood  •  Link

"Items which go by the board could be said to be jetsam" Probably flotsam unless perhaps cables and rigging needed to be cut to free the ship from the items or the items are just tossed overboard.

IIRC you find, say, an empty lifeboat from a ship floating in the ocean and manage to bring it to shore it no longer belongs to the ship if the crew is responsible for it being in the ocean. Then it's jetsam and belongs to you (and perhaps some government entity), but if it was somehow washed overboard it's flotsam; you just salvaged it and are entitled to salvage fees.

About Friday 5 January 1665/66

Nate Lockwood  •  Link

There was an age of consent, I quote from:

rictornorton.co.uk/though16.htm

"The legal history, though very complicated, can be summarized: the age of consent for girls was 12 in the 13th century, but was lowered to 10 in 1576, and remained there until it was raised to 12 in 1861, then to 13 in 1875, and then to 16 in 1885. One could enter into a Common Law marriage at the age of 12."

About Sunday 24 December 1665

Nate Lockwood  •  Link

Happy Holidays. I came across a frozen Cornish Pasty which I will thaw and have as a small dinner in Pepys honor along with a British evening draught. My first pasty ever.

About Thursday 23 November 1665

Nate Lockwood  •  Link

Nick, there was an age of consent in Pepys day, 12 years old.

"In 1275, the first age of consent was set in England, at age 12 (Westminster 1 statute).[3] In 1875, the Offences Against the Person Act raised the age to 13 in Great Britain and Ireland, and ten years later the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 raised it to 16.[4][5] In 1917, a bill raising the age of consent in Great Britain and Ireland from 16 to 17 was defeated by only one vote."

The quoted paragraph is from this much longer Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age…

Let's not get too self righteous:
In the US many colonies and later the states had ages of consent of 10 or 12 years but a legal defence that the child was not virgin was accepted. Many of those laws were changed starting in the late 19th century but some continued through the late 20th century: https://www.sunypress.edu/pdf/608…

I think that Europe might have had similar laws.

About Wednesday 12 June 1667

Nate Lockwood  •  Link

"The History Guy' has a short blog explaining the origins of the war, the audacious raid, and the consequences. He shows paintings, drawings, maps, layout of the shipyard, etc. and mentions Pepys. Here's the link:
https://youtu.be/yiLiTJ1Ofys
I wonder how long it will last.

About Sunday 18 June 1665

Nate Lockwood  •  Link

Caulking, oakum, etc.
When sailors had ought to do they would be placed on deck far enough apart so it would be hard for them to converse. They'd then painstakingly unravel old hawsers that were no longer strong enough to be used and roll the fibers for caulking. No one is idle shipboard.

About Saturday 25 March 1665

Nate Lockwood  •  Link

I agree with MR and AS and note that a great driving force for very accurate clocks was to solve the longitude problem which was of great interest for navigation especially for the merchant navy; and the search was on, but not solved, in the 17th century.

About Wednesday 1 March 1664/65

Nate Lockwood  •  Link

"townsend 18th century cooking" has videos on 18th century American cooking and living on YouTube and that's only roughly 50 to 100 years after these diaries.

"French" bread is described. It's made with extra ingredients (oil and egg? Can't remember) that results in a thick hard flakey crust, it looks as if one could tap it with a spoon and get a drum sound.

The interesting part is that the brown crust is removed by cutting and reserved for other cooking leaving a sorry looking but apparently really tasty loaf of bread.
I mention this because the recipe quite possibly came from England and might have been used in Pepys time.

Do we have any bread recipes from this era?

About Saturday 25 February 1664/65

Nate Lockwood  •  Link

When I was first in Brazil in 1991 I did some reading to prepare myself. One author said that 'the Portuguese brought Christianity to the Indians and the Indians gave the Portuguese the habit of bathing: The Portuguese got the better deal'.

About Friday 24 February 1664/65

Nate Lockwood  •  Link

Re: Navigation. Estimating the ship's latitude by the altitude of the sun at local apparent noon (LAN) or at twilight by Polaris would have been a welcome factor in dead reckoning especially if the desired course should along a meridian or parallel. It's really hard to take a good sight when the ship is in tropical waters.

Using the sun one takes a sight around 9 am and another at LAN, say 3 and half hours later and 'advances' the 9 o'clock line along the track by the distance that they reckon the ship traveled in that time using their best guess for speed (dead reckoning). The Captain now has the important noon position (more or less)j.

BTW 20 years ago, around 1988, I discovered that the California Maritime Academy was no longer teaching celestial navigation. At some point neither was the Annapolis Naval Academy but I've heard that they have recently reinstated the course.

About Monday 20 February 1664/65

Nate Lockwood  •  Link

" Basically you sing repeatedly the sentence 'Oh sir Jasper do not touch me' and at each iteration leave off one of the words. ..."

Try this with a rising pitch for each word the contrast by starting with a high pitch and lowering the pitch for each word. There's a world of difference (neglecting that pesky 'do').

About Tuesday 3 January 1664/65

Nate Lockwood  •  Link

"Light houses". The lights, 'leading lights' in the British Isles, were arranged with the low one some distance from out, toward the channel, from the higher rear light. When the lights were seen one over the other the vessel would be in the channel. Some skill was required even then as often there were currents that would push the vessel to port or starboard unless it crabbed.

Since the vessel needing the light had to enter the harbor it could easily be identified and billed.

Today, or 50 years ago when I was was in the US Navy, we called them 'range lights'.

This link should be good for a few years before it rots: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lea…