Saturday 25 November 1665

Up, and busy at the office all day long, saving dinner time, and in the afternoon also very late at my office, and so home to bed. All our business is now about our Hambro fleete, whether it can go or no this yeare, the weather being set in frosty, and the whole stay being for want of Pilotts now, which I have wrote to the Trinity House about, but have so poor an account from them, that I did acquaint Sir W. Coventry with it this post.


5 Annotations

First Reading

Glyn  •  Link

Do we know if this fleet is going to Hambro (i.e. Hamburg) to pick up naval supplies, or for other purposes? There must be danger of meeting the Dutch somewhere along the route.

Terry Foreman  •  Link

Trinity House is ambiguous: it is an institution whose principal charge is navigation, headquartered in Deptford, as the link shows. There were also Trinity Houses in Dover, Hull and Newcastle. As we have seen, the main responsibility of Trinity House was lights, ergo lighthouses, beacons and buoys, by extension the licensing of pilots and watermen (until 1663 with the Watermen's Company), and for the clearing of navigable channels (until 1663 with the city). For more its early history see the article on Trinity House in the L&M Companion; for more see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trin…

Michael Robinson  •  Link

"All our business is now about our Hambro fleete, whether it can go or no this yeare, ..."

The fleet have been waiting for some months now:

"After dinner I by water to the Duke of Albemarle, and there had a little discourse and business with him, chiefly to receive his commands about pilotts to be got for our Hambro’ ships, going now at this time of the year convoy to the merchant ships, that have lain at great pain and charge, some three, some four months at Harwich for a convoy."
http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…

"There must be danger of meeting the Dutch somewhere along the route."

That was the fate of part of the spring merchant fleet of naval supplies from Hamburg, see Pedro's annotation:

http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…

cgs  •  Link

What a world, there be always be someone after thy goods and chattels, if it is not buccaneers,and not pirates then it is your fellow business men dressed in foreign livery of another leader.
Strange that the Dutch did not have inflation in spite of lost revenue, the VOS stock was always gaining, the speculators did not lose their shirt in spite of admirals losing their large diamonds , while England had inflation.

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