On the 19th: “Nothing but distraction and confusion in the affairs of the navy.”
On the 28th he adds: “Captain Guy to dine with me. He cries out of the discipline of the fleet, and confesses really that the true English valour we talk of is almost spent and worn out; few of the commanders doing what they should do, and he much fears we shall therefore be beaten the next year. He assures me we were beaten home the last June fight, and that the whole fleet was ashamed to hear of our bonfires. The Revenge having her forecastle blown up with powder to the killing of some men in the river, and the Dyamond being overset in the careening at Sheerness, are further marks of the method all the king’s work is now done in. The Foresight also and another come to disasters in the same place this week in the cleaning.”
On the 2nd of November he describes the Ruby, French prize, “the only ship of war we have taken from any of our enemies this year. It seems a very good ship, but with galleries quite round the sterne to walk in as a balcone, which will be taken down.”
News of the Dutch having been seen off the mouth of the Thames alarms every one; and on the 24th of March, 1667, he writes: “By-and-by to the Duke of Yorke, where we all met, and there was the king also; and all our discourse was about fortifying of the Medway and Harwich; and here they advised with Sir Godfrey Lloyd and Sir Bernard de Gunn, the two great engineers, and had the plates drawn before them; and indeed all their care they now take is to fortify themselves, and are not ashamed of it.”
On the 9th of June he writes: “I find an order come for the getting some fire-ships presently to annoy the Dutch, who are in the king’s channel, and expected up higher.”
The next day: “News brought us that the Dutch are come up as high as the Nore; and more pressing orders for fire-ships. We all went down to Deptford, and pitched upon ships and set men at work, but, Lord! to see how backwardly things move at this pinch, notwithstanding that by the enemy being now come up as high as almost the Hope.”
Anxiety and terror prevailed in the city, and people were removing their goods—the thoughtful Mr Pepys making a girdle to carry 300 pounds in gold about his body. The alarm is further increased when a neighbour comes up from Chatham, and tells him that that afternoon he “saw the Royal James, the Oake, and London burnt by the enemy with their fire-ships; that two or three men-of-war come up with them, and made no more of Upnor Castle’s shooting than of a fly; that the Dutch are fitting out the Royal Charles.”
Ships were to be sunk in the river, about Woolwich, to prevent the Dutch coming up higher.
“The masters of the ships that are lately taken up, do keep from their ships all their stores, or as much as they can, so that we cannot despatch them, having not time to appraise them, nor secure their payment. Only some little money we have, which we are fain to pay the men we have with every night, or they will not work. And, indeed, the hearts as well as the affections of the seamen are turned away; and in the open streets in Wapping, and up and down, the wives have cried publickly, ‘This comes of not paying our husbands; and now your work is undone, or done by hands that understand it not.’”
Some of the men, “instead of being at work at Deptford, where they were intended, do come to the office this morning to demand the payment of their tickets; for otherwise they would, they said, do no more work; and are, as I understand from everybody that has to do with them, the most debauched, swearing rogues that ever were in the navy, just like their prophane commander.”