men.' A somewhat later entry in the same journal calls up a picture of a very different kind of place to the crowded, busy, and somewhat squalid {87} town of to-day, for on May 28, 1669, the writer says: 'My wife away down with Jane ... to Woolwich in order to [get] a little ayre, and to lie there to-night and so to gather May dew in the morning ... to wash her face with.' To quote Pepys again, he laments at the time of the scare about the Dutch, the sinking of so many good ships in the Thames off Woolwich, shrewdly remarking that these ships 'would have been good works to command the river below' had the enemy attempted to pass them, and adding, 'it is a sad sight while we would be thought masters of the sea.' [Illustration: THE THAMES AT WOOLWICH] The gallant Prince Rupert was for some time in command at Woolwich, and greatly strengthened its defences, adding to them a battery of sixty guns. According to tradition, he lived in the house near the arsenal, now converted into a museum close to which was a lofty observatory named after him, comanding a fine view, which was unfortunately taken down in 1786. Throughout the whole of the eighteenth and part of the nineteenth century, when wars and rumours of wars kept up a constant demand for new battleships, additions continued to be made to the great dockyard of Woolwich, which reached the zenith of its prosperity under the gifted engineers, Sir John Rennie and his son, who created a large reservoir, built a strong river wall, and proved themselves equal to meeting every emergency that arose. The dockyard soon became as celebrated for the iron vessels launched from it as for their wooden predecessors, but ere long even it failed to be able to produce the huge iron-clad {88} men-of-war required for modern scientific warfare. On September 17, 1869, the fiat went forth that Woolwich dockyard should be closed, and soon after part of it was sold, whilst the remainder was converted into a Government storehouse for munitions of war.