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."

"Nothing but carelessness lost the _Royal Charles_, for they might have
saved her the very tide that the Dutch came up. The Dutch did take her
with a boat of nine men, who found not a man on board her; and presently
a man went up and struck her flag, and jacke, and a trumpeter sounded
upon her, `Joan's placket is torn;' they did carry her down at a time,
both for tides and wind, when the best pilot in Chatham would not have
undertaken it, they heeling her on one side to make her draw little
water, and so carried her away safe."

"It is a sad sight to see so many good ships there sunk in the river,
while we would be thought to be masters of the sea."

He also examines the chain which had been carried across the river, "and
caused the link to be measured, and it was six inches and one-fourth in
circumference."

He commends the Dutch "for the care they do take to encourage their men
to provide great stores of boats to save them; while we have not credit
to find one boat for a ship." The English mode "of preparing of
fire-ships," he observes, "do not do the work, for the fire not being
strong and quick enough to flame up, so as to take the rigging and
sails, lies smothering a great while, half-an-hour before it flames, in
which time they can get the fire-ships off safely. But what a shame it
is to consider how two of our ship's companies did desert their ships.
And one more company did set their ship on fire and leave her; which
afterwards a Feversham fisherman came up to, and put out the fire, and
carried safe into Feversham, where she now is. It was only want of
courage, and a general dismay and abjectness of spirit upon all our men;
God Almighty's curse upon all that we have in hand, for never such an
opportunity was of destroying so many good ships of the