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 theirs as we now had." To replace the _Royal Charles_ carried away, a new ship was launched on the 4th of March, 1668, called the _Charles_; "God send her better luck than the former." At a Privy Council which he attended, "to discourse about the fitness of entering of men presently for the manning of the fleet, before one ship is in condition to receive them," the king observed, "`If ever you intend to man the fleet without being cheated by the captains and pursers, you may go to bed and resolve never to have it manned.'" At another council he speaks of "a proposition made to the Duke of York by Captain Von Hemskirke, for 20,000 pounds to discover an art how to make a ship go two feet for one what any ship do now, which the king inclines to try, it costing him nothing to try; and it is referred to us to contract with the man." He afterwards says that the secret was only to make her sail a third faster than any other ship. On the 25th of March, 1669, a court-martial was held about the loss of the _Defyance_. The sentence was, "That the gunner of the _Defyance_ should stand upon the _Charles_ three hours with his fault writ upon his breast, and with a halter about his neck, and so be made incapable of any service." The ship was burnt by the gunner allowing a girl to carry a fire into his cabin. Whatever our shortcomings in regard to naval affairs, it is pleasant to believe that they cannot possibly be so great as in the days of Mr Samuel Pepys. CHAPTER ELEVEN. WILLIAM AND MARY--FROM A.D. 1689 TO A.D. 1702.