Minnes. My Lord, I endeavoured to get the wind of you, that I might thereby be able to keep in your company, which otherwise I could not have done, you being so much fleeter than the ‘Elizabeth;’ but in the evenings I constantly came up to your Excellence.

Wh. Why did you not so the last night?

Minnes. The fog rose about five o’clock, and was so thick that we could not see two ships’ length before us.  In that fog I lost you, and, fearing there might be danger in the night to fall upon the coast, I went off to sea, supposing you had done so likewise, as, under favour, your captain ought to have done; and for my obedience to your Excellency’s commands, it hath been and shall be as full and as willing as to any person living.

Wh. When you found by my guns that you were so far from me to the windward, you might fear that I was fallen into that danger which you had avoided by keeping yourself under the wind more at large at sea.

Minnes. If I had in the least imagined your Excellence to have been in danger, we had been worse than Turks if we had not endeavoured to come in to your succour; and though it was impossible, as we lay, for our ship to come up to your Excellence, yet I should have adventured with my boats to have sought you out.  But that you were in any danger was never in our thoughts; and three hours after your guns fired, sounding, I found by the lead the red sand, which made me think both your Excellence and we might be in the more danger, and I lay the further off from them, but knew not where your Excellence was, nor how to come to you.

After much more discourse upon this subject, Captain Parkes pressing it against Minnes, who answered well for himself, and showed that he was the better seaman in this action and in most others, and in regard of the cause of rejoicing which God had given them, and that they now were near the end of their voyage, Whitelocke held it not so good to continue the expostulation as to part friends with Captain Minnes and with all his fellow-seamen, and so they proceeded together lovingly and friendly in their voyage.

The wind not blowing at all, but being a high calm, they could advance no further than the tide would carry them, the which failed them when they came to a place called Shoe, about four leagues from the mouth of Thames.  Having, through the goodness of God, passed by and avoided many banks of sands and dangerous places, the wind failing them and the tide quite spent, they were forced about seven o’clock in the evening to come to an anchor, Captain Minnes hard by the ‘President,’ where, to make some pastime and diversion, he caused many squibs and fireworks to be cast up into the air from the ‘Elizabeth,’ in which Minnes was very ingenious, and gave recreation thereby to Whitelocke and to his company.

June 30, 1654.

[SN:  Reach the Nore and Gravesend.]