Greenwich, to within the shore of Limehouse and Redriff, all the ships
that could have room rid two and two in the middle of the stream, and
that some of them had several families on board. I asked him if the
distemper had not reached them. He said he believed it had not,
except two or three ships whose people had not been so watchful to
keep the seamen from going on shore as others had been, and he said
it was a very fine sight to see how the ships lay up the Pool.
When he said he was going over to Greenwich as soon as the tide
began to come in, I asked if he would let me go with him and bring
me back, for that I had a great mind to see how the ships were ranged,
as he had told me. He told me, if I would assure him on the word of a
Christian and of an honest man that I had not the distemper, he would.
I assured him that I had not; that it had pleased God to preserve me;
that I lived in Whitechappel, but was too impatient of being so long
within doors, and that I had ventured out so far for the refreshment
of a little air, but that none in my house had so much as been touched
with it.
Well, sir,’ says he, ‘as your charity has been moved to pity me and
my poor family, sure you cannot have so little pity left as to put
yourself into my boat if you were not sound in health which would be
nothing less than killing me and ruining my whole family.’ The poor
man troubled me so much when he spoke of his family with such a
sensible concern and in such an affectionate manner, that I could not
satisfy myself at first to go at all. I told him I would lay aside my
curiosity rather than make him uneasy, though I was sure, and very
thankful for it, that I had no more distemper upon me than the freshest
man in the world. Well, he would not have me put it off neither, but
to let me see how confident he was that I was just to him, now
importuned me to go; so when the tide came up to his boat I went in,
and he carried me to Greenwich. While he bought the things which
he had in his charge to buy, I walked up to the top of the hill under
which the town stands, and on the east side of the town, to get a
prospect of the river. But it was a surprising sight to see the number
of ships which lay in rows, two and two, and some places two or three
such lines in the breadth of the river, and this not only up quite to the
town, between the houses which we call Ratcliff and Redriff, which
they name the Pool, but even down the whole river as far as the head
of Long Reach, which is as far as the hills give us leave to see it.
I cannot guess at the number of ships, but I think there must be
several hundreds of sail; and I could not but applaud the contrivance:
for ten thousand people and more who attended ship affairs were
certainly sheltered here from the violence of the contagion, and lived
very safe and very easy.
I returned to my own dwelling very well satisfied with my day’s
journey, and particularly with the poor man; also I rejoiced to see that
such little sanctuaries were provided for so many families in a time of
such desolation. I observed also that, as the violence of the plague
had increased, so the ships which had families on board removed and
went farther off, till, as I was told, some went quite away to sea, and
put into such harbours and safe roads on the north coast as they could
best come at.
But it was also true that all the people who thus left the land and
lived on board the ships were not entirely safe from the infection, for