From the great accuracy of the dates given (which have been frequently tested from contemporary sources), it is clear that Phineas kept a diary in which events were recorded as they occurred, and from which the narrative was compiled. He appears to have commenced this diary on going to Chatham in June 1600, when precise dates begin to replace the vague 'about,' 'toward the end,' &c., of the earlier paragraphs.
The narrative stops abruptly in 1638, apparently with the sentence unfinished, for there is no mark of punctuation after the last word. In 1640, when the final section seems to have been written, Pett was an old man, and it is probable that, having been interrupted at this point, the fast-gathering troubles of the State diverted his mind from the subject, or left him without sufficient energy or leisure to pursue it.
It will be noticed that towards the end the composition becomes more slovenly and the omission of words more frequent, as though the task had become burdensome and the author anxious to have done with it.
Pepys copied the whole of the manuscript into the first volume of his Miscellany with the following preface:
'A Journal of Phineas Pett, Esquire, Commissioner of the Navy and father to Peter Pett, late Commissioner of the same at Chatham, viz: from his birth Ao 1570 to the arrival of the Royal Sovereign, by him then newly built, at her moorings at Chatham; transcribed from the original written all with his own hand and lent me to that purpose by his grandson Mr. Phineas, son to Captain Phineas Pett.'
The manuscript afterwards came into the possession of George Jackson, who was Secretary of the Navy Board in 1758 and Second Secretary of the Admiralty from 1766 to 1782. Sir George Duckett (he had changed his surname in 1797) died in 1822, and ten years later his library, including a very valuable collection of naval manuscripts, was sold by auction. Fortunately the manuscripts were purchased by the British Museum after being bought in at the sale; the volume (No. IV) in which this manuscript was contained becoming Additional MS. 9298. A commonplace book (Additional MS. 9295) containing, among copies of various naval documents, an abbreviated version was purchased at the same time.
The copy of the autobiography most generally known is the early eighteenth-century transcript in the Harleian Collection (Harl. 6279). It is to this copy that writers usually refer, possibly because it is mentioned in the paper[2] published in Archæologia in 1796, although the garbled extracts there given are stated to have been taken 'from another copy' and seem, in fact, to have been taken from the original.[3] A further reason for the preference generally shown for the Harleian copy may be its more modern and more clerkly handwriting.
The Harleian transcript is not a good one. It contains few omissions, none of great importance, but mistranscriptions of individual words are very numerous and have reduced the text to nonsense in several places.[4] It may seem strange that writers should be content to quote passages that were evidently incorrect, without looking at another copy, which was easily to be found; but whatever the reason may be, the fact is that hitherto the original has remained unidentified as such.
The best transcript is that made by Pepys; but even he had difficulty in deciphering some of the words, although the handwriting of Pett is, on the whole, very clear and consistent.
In preparing this edition, the Pepysian and Harleian copies have been collated and the missing parts of the original made good by this means; but as the numerous inversions of form and mistakes of reading in these copies have no general interest—and are of no authority in presence of the original—there is no need to specify them in detail.