The Papers of Thomas Bowrey, 1669-1713

Discovered in 1913 by John Humphreys, M.A., F.S.A., and now in the possession of Lieut.-Colonel Henry Howard, F.S.A..

Sir Richard Carnac Temple, Sir Richard Carnac Temple

• Publisher: Hakluyt Society
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317021780
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Early Modern History
• Index: History

Part I. Diary of a Six Weeks' Tour in 1698 in Holland and Flanders. Part II. The Story of the Mary Galley, 1704-1710 This is a new print-on-demand hardback edition of the volume first published in 1927. Owing to technical constraints it has not been possible to reproduce "Map 4: Charts of the Essex and Kentish Coasts about the Estuary of the Thames, drawn by Thomas Bowrey to illustrate his voyages in his yacht, the Duck, 1690-1701" which appeared in the first edition of the work.

PART I

DAIRY OF THE TOUR IN HOLLAND AND FLANDERS

Photographed by Donald Macbeth

SPECIMEN PAGE OF THOMAS BOWREY’S DIARY, 1698 Full size

INTRODUCTION

AS there have been at all times and everywhere, there must have been many men in England in the seventeenth century who led lives of constant movement. Among such are to be numbered the travellers Thomas Bowrey and Peter Mundy. Neither of them seems to have been able to sit still for long, and the story of Thomas Bowrey’s tour in 1698 is an instance of his outstanding energy.

In 1694 he must have bought a pocket book 7

by 3

inches, containing 75 leaves, for the purpose of making notes of his journeys in his yacht, the Duck, about the mouth of the Thames. The first four leaves are blank; the next nine contain notes on sailing directions for the waters round the mouth of the Thames, made between 1694 and 1701; the next twenty-five contain the Diary of the journey to Holland and Flanders; the next two again sailing directions; and the last thirty-five are again blank. Both the Diary and the Sailing Directions are of great historical interest, and the latter are printed as Appendix III to this part of the volume.

Writing in a small cramped seventeenth-century hand, with about 300 words to a page, Bowrey found a good deal of empty space in his pocket book in 1698, when at about fifty years of age, he had determined on a tour on the Continent. So he took the book with him to utilise it for a diary of his wanderings. The earlier pages containing the sailing directions have been damaged by sea-water, and before portions of them could be recovered for decipherment, they had to be chemically treated. A typical page has been photographed to show the reader what the manuscript is like.

Bowrey’s tour seems to have been undertaken partly for business purposes, as he had commercial correspondents in Amsterdam and elsewhere, being, as we know from the accounts of his ship, the Mary Galley, given in Part II of this volume, a ship-builder and a ship-owner on a considerable scale as well as a general East India merchant. But mainly he went abroad for pleasure, to see the Low Countries. He was in fact out for a holiday, and a very energetic holiday it was.

He undertook the journey in his own yacht, “the Duck Yaut” as he calls her, for the history of which see Appendix II. His travelling companion was his friend Nathaniel Long, a London merchant, and though he does not mention either the name of the vessel or of his friend in his Diary, we learn them from the accounts of the journey given in Appendix I. The need of rest and change of scene, as well as motives of business and pleasure, probably contributed to Bowrey’s decision to go abroad for a short period. During the previous eighteen months he had had much worry and anxiety with consequent loss of health. The cause of his troubles was that he, with others, of whom Nathaniel Long was one, had freighted the St George galley for a voyage to India in the winter of 1696. Bowrey was to have sailed in her as master, but before she reached the Downs the vessel proved to be unseaworthy, and on her way into Portsmouth harbour for overhauling, she accidentally came into collision with a Swedish vessel and was so seriously injured that her voyage had to be abandoned. When the owners’ accounts came to be settled, it was found that there would be a loss of £19.IIs. on each £100 subscribed. One of the owners, John Rolls, refused to pay his share, and on 19 April 1698 the other owners agreed to bring an action against him. It was while these proceedings were pending that Bowrey and Long took their trip abroad. At this time they were on intimate terms, but before the litigation ended their friendship had considerably cooled.

Nathaniel Long is described in his legal proceedings with Bowrey as a London merchant, but in Bowrey’s account book of the joint journeys (Appendix I), he appears as Major Nathaniel Long, and in the endorsement of another account with him in 1704–5 as “Coll: Long,” though in the body of that document he is called throughout “Ma: Long.” His military title was probably due to his connection with the London Train Bands or Hon. Artillery Company, but the papers show that he was also a merchant.

There is no evidence as to Bowrey’s linguistic attainments, except as regards Oriental tongues, but he could not have had much difficulty in making himself understood in the Low Countries at the end of the seventeenth century, for the author of Délices des Païs-Bas (1697) says (p. 50): “L’Anglois y est à présent fort commun, tant à cause du voisinage de l’Angleterre avec les Païs-Bas, que parceque dans ces dernières Guerres, il y a grand nombre de Soldats Anglois qui viennent pour défendre ce Païs contre ses Ennemis.”

It will be seen from his Diary that Bowrey’s journey was a very rapid one, and his remarks are therefore of unequal value. For instance, he gives a capital description of Amsterdam, and there he seems to have taken careful note of everything worthy of observation, but in the other places he...