Website: http://springnuts.org/
Eric the Bish
Annotations and comments
Eric the Bish has posted 77 annotations/comments since 9 July 2020.
Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
Website: http://springnuts.org/
Eric the Bish has posted 77 annotations/comments since 9 July 2020.
Comments
Third Reading
About Thursday 3 May 1660
Eric the Bish • Link
The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary gives as an (obsolete) definition of bullet “a ball for a cannon or other piece of ordinance“. So these are proper cannonballs; quite capable of smashing Pepys’ boat, and taking the lives of two or three people with it; not mere ‘bullets’ as we think of them. With the general excitement; the chances of a partial misfire causing the ball to drop short; and the vagaries of aiming a non-rifled barrel, it must indeed have been an “interesting” experience!
About Tuesday 1 May 1660
Eric the Bish • Link
"HMS Nonesuch" (note the modern spelling) survives eternally in the Royal Navy in the pages of paper based training scenarios: “You are the Supply Officer of HMS Nonesuch. You are preparing for a royal visit in three days time, when the freezers break down, spoiling all the fresh food on board and flooding 2 deck …”. That sort of thing.
About Monday 30 April 1660
Eric the Bish • Link
I’m fascinated by Pepys’ drunken behaviour. A man of great ability and promise … if he can avoid becoming a sot. It will be interesting to see how things develop. I sense that the diary here, more than sometimes, is both a mirror, by which he can assess his behaviour, and something of a confessional.
About Thursday 19 April 1660
Eric the Bish • Link
Ships - even modern grp and steel ones - leak: there are deck piercings for masts and fittings (like that chimney); and a wooden ship has gaps between the deck planks. These are caulked and tarred, but the caulking/tarring can be and often is less than 100%. The water gets in, then tracks along beams etc so where it drips is almost certainly not where it’s getting in. And if you do get the ship utterly watertight you have condensation to worry about.
So a cabin just below the main deck may have disadvantages.
Clever sailors stow their bedding away until it’s needed; dodge the drips, and on dry days air the blankets to get them fully dry.
Sleeping in the great cabin a deck below as Pepys did two days ago might be another smart move.
About Monday 9 April 1660
Eric the Bish • Link
Just to add on the guns: there would be recoil only if the gun was shotted. But I don’t think we know if they were shotted or not. You’d get a more satisfactory bang if they were. From modern weapons “rattle” normally indicates small arms fire, but here it seems clear that the big guns are being fired.
About Wednesday 4 April 1660
Eric the Bish • Link
“I dined all alone to prevent company, which was exceeding great to-day, in my cabin.”
Not to avoid company, but to eat before they arrive: “prevent” has the meaning “go before”, as in the Collect (prayer): “Prevent us O Lord in all our doings …”.
With so many meetings to attend Pepys has to carve out time for a hurried meal - dining alone ensures that he can eat quickly and get back to work.
About Thursday 15 March 1659/60
Eric the Bish • Link
“I did promise to give her all that I have in the world... in case I should die at sea.”
We live longer and healthier lives, yet we are less able to accept the reality of death than Samuel Pepys. When we get to the plague in London, it will be interesting to hold up the narrative and effects of Lockdown during and after the Covid pandemic against Samuel’s more realistic age.
Second Reading
About The end of the second cycle
Eric the Bish • Link
Many many thanks, Phil, for all your efforts. In a world full of lunacy the diary has been a daily thread of sanity. Dare we hope, please, for a third cycle?
About Friday 28 May 1669
Eric the Bish • Link
@Phil, having come late to the party, may I request - please - that you go the third mile and when Samuel puts away his pen; you once more re-run the entire diary from the start?
About Tuesday 20 April 1669
Eric the Bish • Link
“… no doubt but it will be of profit to merchantmen and others, to have guns of the same force at half the charge.”
Good military leaders pay attention to logistics: with this gun you can carry less powder, or keep fighting longer. Either way is “profitable”.
“Point blank”: in popular usage, point-blank range has come to mean extremely close range; here it may mean the range where the gun will hit a target without the need to adjust the standard elevation.
About Friday 2 April 1669
Eric the Bish • Link
With grateful thanks to a random WordPress website – link below:
“Pothecary, Potticary — Middle English: apotecarie, ultimately from Latin apothecarius “store-keeper” (specifically of spices and drugs — only later came to mean some-one who prepared drugs, an apothecary).”
https://namenookdotcom.wordpress.…
About Thursday 25 March 1669
Eric the Bish • Link
Public announcement of punishment was retained in the RN until around 2000 in the “Warrant Reading” - a sailor who had, for example, been found guilty of theft from his messmates (a heinous offence and one which is highly damaging to teamwork) would be brought, under arrest, in front of a parade of those same messmates and the warrant of punishment read. He was then marched immediately to the van which would take him to military detention at Colchester.
About Monday 22 February 1668/69
Eric the Bish • Link
“mightily well pleased with this day’s work”.
What does he mean by this? Not office work? Any ideas?
About Wednesday 17 February 1668/69
Eric the Bish • Link
We “had each of us a ring”. Does anyone know what you did with the ring when you had it? I assume that over time there would be too many to continue wearing them all.
About Wednesday 17 February 1668/69
Eric the Bish • Link
“I have reason to thank God, and so I do now, that I was not tempted to go further.” Slight difference of language between then and now: in modern usage he certainly was “tempted to go further”! He means something like “I was not successfully tempted”. The temptation is seen as extraneous to the man himself, not coming from within but from without. Samuel does not say who is tempting him: there is no hint that the woman, the occasion of temptation, is seen as the agent of it, but nor does he name, for example, the devil as his tempter.
About Sunday 20 December 1668
Eric the Bish • Link
Few ships have topsails now, but the custom of saluting is maintained by dipping the ensign to a warship of one’s own nation. The flag is lowered a few feet, and kept down until the salute is returned in the same way. Once the warship’s flag is re-hoisted the first vessel re-hoists and the salute is complete. The Royal Navy certainly still take such courtesies very seriously. A sailing dinghy, without an ensign, salutes by letting the sheets fly (so the sails flap); a rowing boat by lifting the oats to the vertical, but I doubt one warship in 100 would recognise the salute. :)
About Thursday 10 December 1668
Eric the Bish • Link
“to the end that here as well as in Italy Obseruations may be made to fi[n]de out the precise Difference of Meridians.”
Close observation of the moons of Jupiter does provide a method of calculating longitude, that vital question for mariners, but the practical problems were insurmountable at sea. It would be 70 years before Harrison, with his clock H1, provided the necessary accuracy in measuring time which would allow the problem to be solved.
About Sunday 6 December 1668
Eric the Bish • Link
“A lazy sermon”. As a preacher, I too would love to know what Pepys means by this.
I could only suggest:
First, a sermon which is inadequately prepared so that the points made bear no resemblance to what the text actually says, and which may in fact reflect a misunderstanding of what the text actually says.
Second, a short sermon: there just isn’t much of it.
Third, one which was delivered in a lazy manner; especially if a full text is written beforehand which is read hurriedly, or inaccurately, or inaudibly.
Finally one which is not original to the preacher but where they have simply gone to a book of sermons and read someone else’s text.
But this is all speculation, unless anyone can point me to some examples of what Pepys actually meant!
About Sunday 22 November 1668
Eric the Bish • Link
“… set down my journall, for some days leaving it imperfect”. Could “some days” be five or six weeks, and “imperfect” refer to the 13 days gap in October? But it feels too long ago.
About Wednesday 4 November 1668
Eric the Bish • Link
“… these counsels are very mad.” - I take the “very” here to mean “truly”, rather than “extremely”. Does that sound correct?