The victualling contract of which we possess the fullest details was that of 31 December, 1677[234]. From this it appears that the daily allowance of each man was 'one pound averdupois of good, clean, sweet, sound, well-bolted with a horse-cloth, well-baked, and well-conditioned wheaten biscuit; one gallon, wine measure, of beer' ... 'two pounds averdupois of beef, killed and made up with salt in England, of a well-fed ox ... for Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays'—or, instead of beef, for two of those days one pound averdupois of bacon, or salted English pork, of a well-fed hog ... and a pint of pease (Winchester measure) therewith' ...; 'and for Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, every man, besides the aforesaid allowance of bread and beer, to have by the day the eighth part of a full-sized North Sea cod of 24 inches long, or a sixth part of a haberdine 22 inches long, or a quarter part of the same sort if but 16 inches long ... or a pound averdupois of well-savoured Poor John, together with two ounces of butter, and four ounces of Suffolk cheese, or two-thirds of that weight of Cheshire.' The contract provides for English beef because there was a strong prejudice in the navy against Irish beef. Pepys quotes one writer as saying 'The Irish meat is very unwholesome, as well as lean, and rots our men'[235]; and John Hollond argues that to serve Irish beef was greatly to discourage the seamen[236]. 'Haberdine' is salt or sun-dried cod, and 'Poor John' is salted or dried hake.
In the case of vessels sailing 'to the southward of the latitude of 39 degrees N.' it was allowable for the contractors to vary the diet—'In lieu of a pound of biscuit, a pound of rusk of equal fineness; in lieu of a gallon of beer, a wine quart of beverage wine or half a wine pint of brandy ... in lieu of a piece of beef or pork with pease, three pounds of flour and a pound of raisins (not worse than Malaga), or in lieu of raisins, half a pound of currants or half a pound of beef suet pickled; in lieu of a sized fish, four pounds of Milan rice or two stockfishes of at least 16 inches long; in lieu of a pound of butter or two pounds of Suffolk cheese, a wine pint of sweet olive oil.' The separate victualling contract for the Mediterranean[237] provided for this lighter diet there in any case; but the variation was not popular among the seamen. In Captain Boteler's Six Dialogues about Sea Services, printed in 1685 but written some fifty years earlier, the 'admiral,' who, having just been appointed to the 'high-admiralship,' is occupied throughout the book in remedying an abysmal ignorance of naval matters by conversation with a 'sea-captain,' suggests that it would be better for the health of the mariners if the ordinary victualling were assimilated 'to the manner of foreign parts.' 'Without doubt, my lord,' replies the captain, 'our much, and indeed excessive feeding upon these salt meats at sea cannot but procure much unhealthiness and infection, and is questionless one main cause that our English are so subject to calentures, scarbots, and the like contagious diseases above all other nations; so that it were to be wished that we did more conform ourselves, if not to the Spanish and Italian nations, who live most upon rice-meal, oatmeal, biscake, figs, olives, oil, and the like, yet at the least to our neighbours the Dutch, who content themselves with a far less proportion of flesh and fish than we do, and instead thereof do make it up with pease, beans, wheat-flour, butter, cheese, and those white meats (as they are called).' To this view the admiral assents, but he adds, 'The difficulty consisteth in that the common seamen with us are so besotted on their beef and pork as they had rather adventure on all the calentures and scarbots in the world than to be weaned from their customary diet, or so much as to lose the least bit of it.' I should explain that a calenture is a fever, associated with delirium, to which sailors in the tropics were peculiarly liable; and scarbot is the scurvy[238].
Pepys expected much from the new contract of 1677[239], but the old complaints of delay and bad quality recur[240], and in 1683 his successors decided to abandon contract in favour of a state victualling department resembling in its general character the system of victualling 'upon account,'[241] established from 1655 to the Restoration. If we may infer anything from the silence of the Admiralty Letters, hitherto so vocal upon the subject, this change of method resulted in an improvement in the victualling of the navy, and on the whole the Victualling Office did not come out badly under the test of the mobilisation of 1688. The necessity for this had been realised about the middle of August, and at first the delays caused a good deal of anxiety; but by the end of October Pepys was able to report that the fleet is 'now (God be thanked) at the Gunfleet, and in very good condition there.'[242] There were still ships waiting to be got ready for sea, but of these he writes: 'I do with the same zeal continue to press the despatch of the rest that are behind that I would do for my victuals if I were hungry.'[243]
One of the earlier acts of the Restoration Government was the passing of a statute to incorporate into the system of English law the ordinances already in force during the Interregnum for regulating the discipline of the navy. Before 1652 such crimes as murder and manslaughter on board ship had been punishable by the ordinary law, and lesser offences by the 'known orders and customs of the seas';[244] but in that year the service was for the first time subjected to articles of war,[245] and it was upon these that the provisions of the Act of 1661[246] were founded. By this commanders at sea were empowered to try a great variety of offences by court-martial, and for many of these the maximum penalty was death. This Act continued to govern the navy until the reign of George II.
Another Act, of 1664,[247] dealt with two matters which had given a great deal of trouble to the Navy Board—the frequent embezzlement of naval stores, and the riots among disappointed seamen who could not get their pay. Efforts had been already made to prevent embezzlement by adopting special modes of manufacture for the King's rope, sails, and pennants, and by marking other stores with the broad arrow;[248] but there were some things, such as nails and some other kinds of ironwork, which could not be thus marked. Ironwork in particular was especially favoured by the depredators, because it could be so easily disposed of. In August, 1663, an illicit storehouse discovered at Deptford for the reception of nails, iron shot, and other embezzled ironwork, was described as the 'gulf that swallows up all from any place brought to him.'[249] The riots also had been a serious matter. The preamble of the Act gives as the ground of legislation 'diverse fightings, quarrellings, and disturbances ... in and about his Majesty's offices, yards, and stores,' and 'frequent differences and disorders' which had occurred on pay-days through 'the unreasonable turbulency of seamen.' To meet this state of things the Act invests the Navy Board with some of the powers of magistrates, and authorises them to punish riots and embezzlements with fine and imprisonment.
The Act was useful, but it did not entirely stop embezzlement. In September, 1666, a prize worth £300 was plundered of her lading, and 'will soon,' we are told, 'be dismantled of all her rigging, till she will not have a rope's end left to hang herself, or the thievish seamen that go in her.'[250] Chatham Harbour had always been 'miserably infested' with 'thieves and pilfering rogues,'[251] and in February, 1668, the clerk of the check wrote, 'our people's hands are of late so inured to stealing, that if the sawyers leave any work in the pits half cut, it's a hazard whether they find it in the morning.'[252] The state of things complained of was partly due to the uncertainty of pay. As far as the riots of seamen were concerned, the Act was a failure, as for their grievances force was no remedy. Pepys writes on 4 November, 1665[253], when the Act of 1664 was in full operation, 'After dinner I to the Office and there late, and much troubled to have a hundred seamen all the afternoon there, swearing below and cursing us, and breaking the glass windows, and swear they will pull the house down on Tuesday next. I sent word of this to Court, but nothing will help it but money and a rope.'
The period of Pepys's first Secretaryship witnessed several attempts to effect an improvement in naval discipline. Abuses connected with the unlimited number of cabins built on the King's ships, leading to 'the pestering of the ship,' 'contracting of sickness,' temptation to officers 'to neglect their duties and mis-spend their time in drinking and debauchery,' and 'the danger of fire,' led to the adoption, on 16 October, 1673, of a regular establishment of cabins for ships of each rate[254].
Another abuse of long standing had been the taking of merchants' goods in the King's ships. Sir Robert Slyngesbie had observed in his Discourse[255] in 1660 that this made it easy for the officers to sell the King's stores under the pretence that they were merchandise; to waste time in the ports which ought to have been spent at sea; and so to fill the ship's hold 'that they have no room to throw by their chests and other cumbersome things upon occasion of fight, whereby the gun decks are so encumbered that they cannot possibly make so good an opposition to an enemy as otherwise they might'; and, lastly, to defraud the custom-house. In 1674 Pepys took the matter up, and induced the King to take severe notice of the offenders[256], and in one particularly flagrant case of 1675 to offer the delinquent commander the alternative of imprisonment until trial by court-martial, or forfeiting the whole of his pay for the voyage, and 'making good to the poor of the Chest' at Chatham out of his own purse the value of the freight of the merchants' goods brought home by him[257].
The absence of commanders from their ships without leave gave a good deal of trouble during the period 1673-9. On 1 October, 1673, the Commissioners of the Admiralty ordered that the commanders should be 'pricked out of pay' for such absences[258]; but on 25 May, 1675, Pepys observes 'with much trouble' that the 'late resolutions' 'are already forgotten,' commanders 'appearing daily in the town' without leave[259]. On 9 July he 'spied' the captain of the Lark 'at a distance sauntering up and down Covent Garden, as I have too often heretofore observed him spending his time when the King's service required his attendance on shipboard, as it doth at this day—a practice which shall never pass my knowledge in any commander (be he who he will) without my taking notice of it to his Majesty and my Lords of the Admiralty.'[260] Three years later complaints of this kind became very frequent, and so to the end of Pepys's first Secretaryship in 1679. On 24 March, 1678, he writes: 'I must confess I have never observed so frequent and scandalous instances as I do at this day by commanders hovering daily about the Court and town, though without the least pretence for it.'[261] 'I would to God,' he writes on 29 June to Sir Thomas Allin, 'you could offer me something that may be an effectual cure to the liberty taken by commanders of leaving their ships upon pretence of private occasions, and staying long in town, to the great dishonour of his Majesty's service, and corrupting the discipline of the Navy by their example ... it seeming impossible as well as unreasonable to keep the door constantly barred against commanders' desires of coming to town upon just and pressing occasions of their families, and of the other hand no less hard upon the King that his gracious nature as well as his service should be always liable to be imposed upon by commanders, as often as their humours, pleasures, or (it may be) vices shall incline them to come ashore. Pray think of it and help me herein, for, as I shall never be guilty of withstanding any gentleman's just occasions and desires in this matter, so I shall never be able to sit still and silent under the scandalous liberties that I see every day taken by commanders of playing with his Majesty's service, as if it were an indifferent matter whether they give any attendance on board their ships, so as they have their wages as if they did.'[262]