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Our captivity on the banks of the river Medway, bordered with willows, brought to my mind the plaintive song of the children of Israel, in captivity on the banks of the river Euphrates, which psalm, among others, I used to sing with my mother and sisters, on Sunday evenings, when an innocent boy, and long before the wild notion of rambling, from a comfortable and plentiful home, came into my head.
The wind is from the east, and if they go straight up the Medway they may be there this afternoon, and have the whole of our ships at their mercy. It is enough to make Blake turn in his grave that such an indignity should be offered us, though it be but the outcome of treachery on the part of the Dutch, and of gross negligence on ours.
By and by to the Duke of York, where we all met, and there was the King also; and all our discourse was about fortifying of the Medway and Harwich, which is to be entrenched quite round, and Portsmouth: and here they advised with Sir Godfry Lloyd and Sir Bernard de Gum, the two great engineers, and had the plates drawn before them; and indeed all their care they now take is to fortify themselves, and are not ashamed of it: for when by and by my Lord Arlington come in with letters, and seeing the King and Duke of York give us and the officers of the Ordnance directions in this matter, he did move that we might do it as privately as we could, that it might not come into the Dutch Gazette presently, as the King's and Duke of York's going down the other day to Sheerenesse was, the week after, in the Harlem Gazette.
The next storm submerged the district, of which the Goodwins are the remains, and thus the steeple caused the quicksands, according to the Kentish theory. Proceeding down the Medway, it flows past the city of Rochester, the river being crowded with vessels and crossed here by a bridge with a swinging draw.
We will not retain beyond one year and one day, the lands of those who have been convicted of felony, and the lands shall thereafter be handed over to the lords of the fiefs. All kiddles for the future shall be removed altogether from Thames and Medway, and throughout all England, except upon the seashore.
A flotilla of submarine torpedo-vessels had blown up the defences of the estuary of the Thames and Medway, and led to the fall of Sheerness and Chatham, and had then been docked at Sheerness, there being no further present use for them.
The cable was completed and put on board in June, and the big ship left the Medway on the last of the month and proceeded to Berehaven, in Ireland, where she took on her final stores of coal. This done, she proceeded to Valentia, where she arrived on the seventh of July.
There are some small out-of-the-way landing places on the Thames and the Medway, where I do much of my summer idling. Running water is favourable to day-dreams, and a strong tidal river is the best of running water for mine.
God knows what the issue of it will be. 23rd. At the office all the morning, where Sir W. Pen come, being returned from Chatham, from considering the means of fortifying the river Medway, by a chain at the stakes, and ships laid there with guns to keep the enemy from coming up to burn our ships; all our care now being to fortify ourselves against their invading us.
At length the soldiers, who were scattered in different parts of the town, began gradually to combine their strength, and the savages, learning that re-enforcements were also approaching from Sudbury, were compelled to retire. They retreated across a bridge in the southwest part of the town, in the direction of Medway, keeping up a resolute firing upon their foes who pursued them.
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