Sjoerd22

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Sjoerd22 has posted 15 annotations/comments since 12 May 2018.

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Second Reading

About The end of the second cycle

Sjoerd22  •  Link

Hi Phil, thanks for keeping on keeping this up!
We are hoping for a next cycle... maybe this time around we will be able (again) to have a proper Pepys' Birthday Bash on february 23rd, covid and Brexit restrictions permitting. I really enjoyed the last one!
Wishing everybody a perfect eyesight and generally good health from now on!
Greetings from the Netherlands 🇳🇱
Sjoerd

About Thursday 12 March 1667/68

Sjoerd22  •  Link

A "burning concave" sounds to me as a concave mirror then, not a lens. No other shape could have had the ability to focus infrared radiation in this way?

About Maastricht, Netherlands

Sjoerd22  •  Link

I remember visiting the Hotel Des Invalides in Paris and enjoying a wonderful display of wooden "maquettes", miniature representations of 17th century walled towns and fortifications. They were purpose built for Louis' artillery commanders to study lines of fire. Maastricht was one of the more spectacular ones, having a lot of steep inclines.

About Elizabeth Pearse

Sjoerd22  •  Link

An Elisabet Pearse, "washer woman to the Queen" was recorded as a witness at the birth of James Francis Edward Stuart, 1688. But not in the "official" list of witnesses that James, "the old Pretender" published years later to prove that he had NOT been switched at birth, but in a protestant pamphlet that tried to show that he had.

"This servant to the Queen, that used to receive a yearly sum of 2500 guilder, tells us the following:

1. That she had heard the Queen crying loudly.
2. That this went on until the (so called) Prince of Wales was handed to mrs Labadie
3. That the midwife held up the afterbirth
4. That she with her servant carried away the soiled bed linnen while it was still warm
5. That from looking at the bedlinnen handed to her from time to time she could see that her majesty had been in the same circumstances as women are apt to be.
and 6. That her majesty at that time had had milk in her breasts, as shown by the shirts.

The pamphlet goes on to argue that all of this was secondary evidence and could easily have been falsely constructed to switch a stillborn baby with a healthy changeling.

"De onwettelyke getuygen, George Jeffreys cancelier en Robert grave van Sunderland, president van de geheyme raad van Jacobus de II. coning van Groot Britanje, en secretaris van Staat: Nevens andere getuygen tegens malkanderen, in hunne gegeven attestatien, over de geboorte van den genaamden prince van Wales: Geconfronteert en ongegrond bevonden."

About Sunday 9 July 1665

Sjoerd22  •  Link

He's been using his new watch, the one he got himself last May ?

" I cannot forbear carrying my watch in my hand in the coach all this afternoon, and seeing what o’clock it is one hundred times; and am apt to think with myself, how could I be so long without one"

https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…

About Sunday 18 June 1665

Sjoerd22  •  Link

The word "caulking" has an interesting provenance and comes from French and Latin:

caulk (v.)
late 14c., "to stop up crevices or cracks," from Old North French cauquer, from Late Latin calicare "to stop up chinks with lime," from Latin calx (2) "lime, limestone").

In the opposing Dutch fleet the term would have been "breeuwen" or "kalefateren"

"Breeuwen" is supposed to derive from the Frisian or West germanic "brähen" which means ledge or ridge and also brings us "wenkbrauw" or "eyebrow".

"Kalefateren" from Romanic languages: compare french fra. calfater or calafater, also italian calafatare, spanish calafatear, portug. calafater. The Roman word derives from the Arabic noun qalafa, in Turkish noun, qalfât,

All of them mean: making ships watertight by stuffing something into the seams. But shipbuilding seems to have been influenced by a surprisingly wide range of cultures.

About Friday 16 June 1665

Sjoerd22  •  Link

According to Dutch sources Sandwich had been in a bit of a scrape :

"Bastiaan Senten, on the ship Orange and on his own fought very excellently and had the heart to board Montague alias Sandwich. He flew the Princes flag instead of the Blue flag for more than one hour. It was the Royal James that relieved Montague, the ship onboard which the dukes of Marlborough and Portland had perished. Finally the Orange was burned and exploded after a admirable fight against Captain Smith on the Mary, and Captain Bastiaan Senten died from his wounds."

Senten was an expatriate Scotsman (Seaton).

source "Leven en bedryf van den vermaarden zeeheld Cornelis Tromp, Graaf ..., Volume 1", biography of Tromp.

About Capt. Bastiaan Centen

Sjoerd22  •  Link

"Bastiaan Centen, a Scot by birth as is reported, served as a sea captain for the Zeeland Admiralty in Maarten Harpertz Tromp's fleet, under who's command he captured an English Commonwealth ship of 336 pieces during the Battle of Douvres, 10th of December 1652.
Later he was amongst those Captains serving under Lieutenant Admiral Jacob van Wassenaar-Obdam to hold up the honour of the Dutch flag, en did wonders of bravery. He steered into the enemy fleet, entered the ship of the Duke of Sandwich, and he had already taken posession of the upper deck and had flown the Dutch flag there, when he was forced by superior powers to evade. After this his own ship Orange, of 75 pieces, caught fire and exploded. Centen died a heroes death."

From: Mulert in Nieuw Nederlands Biografisch Woordenboek (NNBW)

About Tuesday 4 July 1665

Sjoerd22  •  Link

Jacob De Witt and Andries Bicker were among the 6 "regents" that were imprisoned in the Loevesteijn state prison by stadtholder prince Willem II. This was after the prince tried a coup on the city of Amsterdam that failed as related above. They were released after they resigned from their posts. So at that point one might say that the prince had the upper hand: the regents had to take a step back.
When the prince suddenly died at age 24 (from a fever or smallpox) it was mostly because of the different Orangist parties arguing over the newborn Willem III that allowed the State party to grab the initiative again and declare the first "Stadtholder-less period".
Nice picture of Andries Bicker here:
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/And…
and of Jacob De Witt:
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jac…

About Monday 17 April 1665

Sjoerd22  •  Link

This Dutch Captain Cornelis Evertsen ("the Youngest", to distinguish from his father the Lieutenant-Admiral and from his uncle the Vice Admiral) was nicknamed "Keesje den Duvel" (the Devil) because of his temper. It is mentioned that his crew had to restrain him physically from blowing his ship up on this occasion. So a bit of a hothead. But the kind of hothead Charles appreciated, apparently.

About Wednesday 10 May 1665

Sjoerd22  •  Link

The Memoirs of the Royal Society note that in 1624 a magnetic needle had been installed by Mr. Gellibrand and Gunter together with a big concave sundial in the "privy-garden" at Whitehall. In "Earth's Magnetism in the Age of Sail" by A. R. T. Jonkers it is recorded that Gellibrand concluded from measurements between 1571-1634 that there was a significant variation in the magnetic declination (East-West) of the compass needle. (as Elisabeth mentions above).
These days maps for the British Isles have the text "var 5°24 W (2002) increasing 6' annually."
According to the same book acceptance of this finding was more common in Britain - because of the scientific standing of these Gresham College professors - than in the rest of the world. Which must have improved British navigation. (Making it maybe a little bit less off-topic).
For years there also was hope that studying the needles - maybe the magnetic inclination - might give a solution to the Longitude Problem. Now we know that the magnetic field can vary locally and also in time because of a slowly moving solid core.