Samuel Pepys and the Royal Navy

Samuel Pepys is remembered for his legendary diary, but behind those intimate pages lay a man obsessed with something far grander: the naval history of England. This 1920 work, drawn from lectures at Trinity College, Cambridge, reveals Pepys as you've never seen him, not the gossiping diarist but the tireless administrator who built the modern Royal Navy from chaos. Drawing on Pepys's extraordinary collection of 114 volumes of 'Sea Manuscripts,' J. R. Tanner traces the arc of naval administration from the Restoration of Charles II through the Revolution of 1688, showing how one methodical clerk attempted to impose order on a notoriously corrupt and inefficient institution. The book illuminates Pepys's grand design, his 'Navalia,' a comprehensive history of the English navy he labored over for decades but never completed, and the administrative battles he fought against graft, mismanagement, and institutional inertia. This is history from the inside: not the clash of admirals and warships, but the unglamorous, essential work of keeping a navy funded, supplied, and operational. For anyone who has wondered what Pepys did with his considerable energies besides write about theater and oysters, this book provides a thrilling answer.