Adrian Tinniswood

What shall I do?

So Pepys says, well, look, the king has offered to send in the troops effectively.

And Bloodworth says, oh, we can't have that.

It's only a few years since General Monk has broken down the gates of the city and marched into the city of London.

So there's an understandable fear of military might, if you like, in the city of London.

But Bloodworth again makes this massively wrong decision.

He says, we can handle this.

We don't need the king's troops.

And then he goes back home.

Poor old Thomas, eh?

You just can't get it right.

Yeah, there were bucket chains.

There were a couple of fire engines in the city.

They're not kind of bright red with bells on top.

They're massive sleds with cisterns on top.

And remember that at this point, the fire hose has not been invented, which means that you've got a kind of brass spout that you can spurt a dribble of water onto a fire, but you've got to get really close to it to do it, and it's not a good idea to get that close to a fire.

But anyway, there's a fire engine that's brought down from Clerkenwell.

It's dragged down by men who then move it to the bottom of Pudding Lane, to the riverbank, to fill up the cistern so they can start spurting water at the fire.

They get too close to the bank.

The fire engine slides into the Thames and sails off down the river and no one ever sees it again.