Digital primer

And so I
having enough for once, refusing to venture, though Brisband
pressed me hard, went away.
2nd. Attended the King and the Duke of York in the Duke of
York's lodgings, with the rest of the officers and many of the
commanders of the fleet, and some of our master shipwrights, to
discourse the business of having the topmasts of ships made to
lower abaft of the mainmast; a business I understand not, and so
can give no good account; but I do see that by how much greater
the Council and the number of counsellors is, the more confused
the issue is of their councils; so that little was said to the
purpose regularly, and but little use was made of it, they coming
to a very broken conclusion upon it to make trial in a ship or
two. From this they fell to other talk about the fleet's
fighting this late war, and how the King's ships have been
shattered; though the King said that the world would not have it
that above ten or twenty ships in any fight did do any service,
and that this hath been told so to him himself by ignorant
people.


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