Page:The history of yachting.djvu/241

 Rh alone could calm the angry sea; he resolved, therefore, to leave Roman Catholic and Puritan alike to their own devices.

The Count de Commings relates, in a letter to King Louis XIV., of being at one time on board one of the King's yachts with a large company to witness the launch of the Royal Catherine, a splendid eighty-gun ship, built at Woolwich by Christopher Pett. The King provided a magnificent repast, at which the French monarch's health was drunk again and again, and Charles commanded the company to respond. The Count writes: "they were not remiss in performing their duty; as the healths were toasted guns were fired, the noise of which brought on a change of weather," and as the festivity progressed, the ship was launched and rolled up the waters of the Thames, which became rather rough, and caused little less unpleasantness among the health-drinkers than the wine, affording Charles much amusement. And the Count continues, describing the difficulties of getting ashore and back to London again, "the King was amused to see all the others sick in the storm, and cared little about exposing us to it."

An interesting account of one of the King's many yachting cruises comes to us through a strange medium,—a History of Music published in 1776. It appears that Charles once made up a party for a sail down the Thames and round the Kentish coast in one of his yachts, the Fubbs, then lately built. This curious appellation, by the way, was a pet name of his for the Duchess of