INTRODUCTION (continued 2)

with its philosophical conclusion, ‘To sea, boys, and let her go hang.’ In Davenant’s Siege of Rhodes, performed in 1656, sailors are introduced whose sentiments would do credit to Dibdin’s heroes. ‘What,’ says one of them,

In Charles the Second’s time Wycherley in 1677 brought upon the stage, in The Plain Dealer, Manley, a gentleman ‘of an honest, surly, nice humour, supposed first in the time of the Dutch war to have procured the command of a ship, out of honour, not of interest, and choosing a sea life only to avoid the world.’ There is also Freeman, Manley’s lieutenant, ‘a gentleman well educated, but of a broken fortune.’ The first scene introduces some of Manley’s crew, who speak of him affectionately as ‘our bully tar,’ and tell how he sank his ship that the Dutch might not have her nor the courtiers beg the hulk. Manley’s crew love him in spite of his surliness. ‘He’s always as dogged,’ says one, ‘as an old tarpaulin when hindered of a voyage by a young pantaloon captain.’ ‘’Tis true,’ answers another, ‘I never saw him pleased but in the fight, and then he looked like one of us coming from the pay table, with a new lining to our hats under our arm.’ D’Urfey’s Captain Porpuss, already mentioned, belongs to the year 1681. These instances refute Mr. Gosse’s statement that Ben, in Congreve’s Love for Love (1695), is the ‘first of a long line of stage sailors.’ On the other hand, Ben represents the type in its most perfect shape. He is a younger son, ‘half home bred and half sea bred,’ designed to marry Miss Prue, whom he woos in technical language. ‘I don’t stand much towards matrimony. I love to roam from port to port and from land to land: I would never abide to be port bound.’ Nevertheless he confesses Prue has charms. ‘You’re a tight vessel and well rigged, an you were but as well manned.’ This promising beginning ends in a quarrel. She calls him a ‘stinking tarbarrel,’ he terms her a ‘dirty dowdy’ (Act iii. sc. vi. vii.). But if Ben has not the gallantry of a stage sailor, he has the aggressive honesty. ‘Don’t think I’m false-hearted like a landsman,’ he tells another lady. ‘A sailor will be honest, tho’ perhaps he has never a penny of money in his pocket. Mayhap I have not so fair a face as a citizen or a courtier, but for all that I’ve as good blood in my veins and a heart as sound as a biscuit’ (Act iii. sc. xv.).

The reign of Queen Anne, compared to that of William III., is rather barren in naval ballads. Pepys died in May 1703, and later collectors who took less interest in maritime affairs allowed the songs written about them to perish. Yet the history of the reign, if marked by no victory equal in magnitude to La Hogue, was distinguished by the victories of Rooke and Leake and many minor successes. The finest ballad of the time is that which records Benbow’s disastrous battle with Ducasse, of which it has been possible to discover a longer and better version than that given in Halliwell’s collection (p. 149).

Fortune was less kind to the fame of Rooke than to that of Benbow. There is, it is true, a poem addressed To the right honourable Sir George Rooke at his Return from his glorious Enterprise near Vigo. It celebrates his success in forcing the Danes to make peace with Sweden in 1700:

It goes on to refer to the unsuccessful attempt on Cadiz in 1702, and to say that ‘auspicious Heaven’ pointed out to England a nobler quarry than the town first aimed at, and one more worthy of Rooke’s arms:

The attack on the allied fleet on Oct. 12, 1702, is related at length in a ballad called The Sailor’s Account of the Action at Vigo (p. 151). But contemporary poetasters in general attribute the victory to Ormonde and the army rather than Rooke and the navy (Poems on State Affairs, ii. 409, 415; Pills to Purge Melancholy, v. 115). Added to this, Rooke’s battle with Toulouse off Malaga on August 13, 1704, gained him neither credit nor popularity, and afforded an opportunity to the satirists, of which they made the most (ib. iv. 112, 113). Specimens of their satires are given on pp. 153, 154.

Nothing has survived on Leake’s exploits excepting a rather poor ballad on the capture of a Spanish provision fleet in 1708 (p. 156). There is also a spirited ballad called The Sea-fight, or the French Prize Taken, published in 1707, which professes to describe an action between two single ships (p. 158).

A contemporary poetaster, describing his voyage to Flanders, inserts some verses ‘in the praise of those heroes commanding the fleet,’ whom he thus commemorates:

On reciting these verses to the captain of a man-of-war, with an appropriate compliment to the captain himself, the poet received an effusive welcome on board. The captain admitted that he was a hero too.

Incidentally the poet describes the ship setting sail:

The reign of Queen Anne was marked by great disasters from fire and storm. In the great storm of November 26, 1703, twelve vessels belonging to the navy were totally lost, according to the list given by Clowes (ii. 389). A ballad on the event entitled The Stormy Judgments or the Tempestuous Wind is printed in the Bagford Ballads (i. 83), but it gives no details. Another entitled The dreadful Tempest or a Divine Poem on the Amazing Hurricane which appeared with Wonderful Violence both by Sea and Land on the 27th of November 1703 describes the loss of four men-of-war:

Over 6,000l. was collected for the widows and orphans who perished in the storm. The order authorising a collection for this purpose is printed by Mr. W. A. Bewes in his Church Briefs, and he also reprints the ballad quoted above (p. 239).

A disaster very little less in its magnitude was the casting away of Sir Clowdisley Shovell on the rocks of the Scilly Islands upon the night of October 22, 1707. The Association, 96, which was Shovell’s flagship; the Eagle, 70; the Romney, 50; and the Firebrand fireship, were totally lost; two others, the Phoenix and the St. George, struck also, but came off without breaking up (Clowes, ii. 411). The best account of the incident is to be found in a pamphlet by Mr. J. H. Cooke, entitled The Shipwreck of Sir Cloudesley Shovell, read at a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries, February 1, 1885, and printed at Gloucester in the same year. No contemporary ballad on Shovell’s fate has survived, but the British Museum contains A New Elegy on the Lamented Death of Sir Cloudesley Shovell, from which the following lines are derived:

A third disaster, the loss of the Edgar, seventy-gun ship, which blew up at Spithead on October 15, 1711 (Clowes iii. 529) is the subject of a dialogue in verse of which a copy is preserved amongst Douce’s collections in the Bodleian Library. It is reprinted at p. 160.

Another incident of an entirely different character requires mention—that is, the execution of the traitor Captain Thomas Smith in 1708. Smith had been dismissed from his command and fined six months’ pay in September 1703 for corruption, drunkenness and other crimes. In 1707 he entered the French service, and apparently acted as pilot to the squadron of French galleys which captured the Nightingale frigate off Harwich on August 24, 1707, after the very gallant fight which is described in the Memoirs of Jacques de Marteilhe (ed. by H. Paumier, 1865, p. 169). Smith was given command of the captured ship, but was taken during his first cruise by Captain Nicholas Haddock in the Ludlow Castle. He was then tried at the Old Bailey on June 2, 1708, found guilty of bearing arms against his country, and executed on June 18, 1708 (see the lives of Thomas Smith and Seth Jermy in the Dictionary of National Biography, and an article on The Captains of the Nightingale in the English Historical Review for January 1889). The Last Farewell of Captain Smith (p. 154) purports to be his dying speech.

During the first half of the eighteenth century a change in the character of the sea songs produced becomes gradually apparent. ‘Songs intended to bring before shore-going listeners the ways of seamen,’ as Sir Cyprian Bridge describes them, had been produced during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but the output of them now greatly increased. They were designed not merely for the ordinary audience to which ballad-writers appealed, but for a higher class of hearers, for the theatre or the drawing-room as well as the street and the tavern. To hit genteel taste they became more sentimental in tone and more polished in diction and metre. They were written mostly by professional poets or men with some literary training. Gay led off. His two celebrated songs, Black-eyed Susan and ’Twas when the seas were roaring, mark the beginning of the movement which culminated in the productions of Dibdin. Both will be found in Mr. Stone’s Sea Songs, pp. 208, 209. Gay had many imitators. To this class belongs Fair Sally loved a bonny sailor (p. 163), which probably suggested Dibdin’s Token. Set to music by Maurice Greene it enjoyed great popularity throughout the eighteenth century. Come and listen to my ditty (p. 162), less artificial in form, obtained a still longer vogue, and was printed as a broadside as late as the beginning of the nineteenth century. It furnished the tune for Hosier’s Ghost. Two other songs, if Smollet is to be trusted, became popular in the navy itself. How pleasant a sailor’s life passes (p. 164) was the favourite of Roderick Random’s uncle Lieutenant Thomas Bowling. A quotation from it supplied the place of argument when the lieutenant persuaded Roderick to go to sea.

‘On our way back to the village, my uncle spoke not a word during the space of a whole hour, but whistled with great vehemence the tune of Why should we quarrel for riches, etc., his visage being contracted all the while into a most formidable frown. At length his pace increased to such a degree, that I was often left behind a considerable way, which when he perceived, he waited for me; and when I was almost come up with him, called out in a surly tone, “Bear a hand, damme!—must I bring to every minute for you, you lazy dog.” Then laying hold of me by the arm, hauled me along, until his good nature (of which he had a good share) and reflection, getting the better of his passion, he said, “Come, my boy, don’t be cast down,—the old rascal is in hell,—that’s some satisfaction;—you shall go to sea with me, my lad.—A light heart and a thin pair of breeches, goes thro’ the world, brave boys; as the song goes—eh!” Though this proposal did not at all suit my inclination, I was afraid of discovering my aversion to it, lest I should disoblige the only friend I had in the world; and he was so much a seaman, that he never dreamt I could have any objection to his design; consequently, gave himself no trouble in consulting my approbation’ (Roderick Random, chap. v. p. 23, ed. 1748).

Another song, The Boatswain’s Whistle (p. 165), which, like the Bonny Sailor, was set by Greene, was the delight of Commodore Trunnion and his ex-boatswain when they made merry together in taverns.

‘Come, Pipes, let’s have The Boatswain’s Whistle, and be jovial.’ This musician accordingly applied to his mouth the silver instrument that hung at a buttonhole of his jacket, by a chain of the same metal, and though not quite so ravishing as the pipe of Hermes, produced a sound so loud and shrill, that the stranger (as it were instinctively) stopped his ears, to preserve his organs of hearing from such a dangerous invasion. The prelude being thus executed, Pipes fixed his eyes upon the egg of an ostrich that depended from the ceiling, and without once moving them from that object, performed the whole cantata in a tone of voice that seemed to be the joint issue of an Irish bagpipe and a sow-gelder’s horn; the commodore, the lieutenant, and landlord joined in the chorus, repeating this excellent stanza,

The third line was no sooner pronounced, than the can was lifted to every man’s mouth with admirable uniformity; and the next word taken up at the end of their draught with a twang equally expressive and harmonious. In short, the company began to understand one another.’ (Peregrine Pickle, chap. ii., p. 18, ed. 1773).

Smollet published Roderick Random in 1748, Peregrine Pickle in 1751. Not only novels, but ballad operas, in imitation of Gay, began to be written in which sailors were the heroes, and their life at sea or loves on shore the subject. In 1745 appeared The Sailor’s Opera, or a Trip to Jamaica, written by some anonymous imitator of the Beggar’s Opera, while in 1763 Tommy and Sally, or the Sailor’s Return to his Sweetheart, was acted at Covent Garden. George Alexander Stevens wrote two: The French Flogged, or the British Sailors in America, 1761, and The Trip to Portsmouth, 1773. The second contains several good songs.

During the same period also professional poets of higher pretensions began to make the navy their theme. The reign of George I. furnished little for the muse to celebrate. That of George II. begins with an immense blowing of literary trumpets about the navy. George II.’s speech to Parliament on January 27, 1728, contained a passage inviting the two Houses to consider a scheme ‘for the increase and encouragement of our seamen in general; that they may be invited rather than compelled to enter into the service of their country, as often as occasion shall require it.’ With that object the King recommended an addition to the funds for the support of Greenwich Hospital. Edward Young seized the opportunity to publish Ocean: an Ode occasioned by his Majesty’s royal encouragement of the Sea Service. He followed this up by writing in 1729 Imperium Pelagi, a Naval Lyric, which ends up by an admonition to the ‘grovelling sons of verse’ not ‘to tarnish Britain’s Naval bloom’ by inferior strains on the same subject. Next came in 1733 his Sea-Piece containing (i) The British Sailor’s Exultation, (ii) His Prayer before action, and last of all in 1734 The Foreign Address; or the best Argument for Peace. All are bad poetry, but they do illustrate the influence which the strength of our navy exercised upon the maintenance of peace during a period in which it gained no public triumphs.

Young wrote from the point of view of the King’s ministers: another poet, James Thomson, set forth the case of the opposition. His Britannia, written in 1727, but not published till 1729, was, says Johnson, ‘a kind of poetical invective against the Ministry, whom the nation then thought not forward enough in resenting the depredations of the Spaniards.’ It recited, as Glover was to do with more effect twelve years later, the sufferings of Hosier’s fleet during their forced inactivity, recalled the memory of the Spanish Armada, and pictured the indignation with which Blake and other ‘immortal spirits’ must behold

Thomson’s Rule, Britannia gave him a more lasting claim to remembrance in any collection of naval literature. It was a song in the masque of Alfred, written by Thomson and Mallet, and performed on August 1, 1740, in honour of the birth of the Princess Augusta. The authorship of Rule, Britannia, has been attributed to Mallet, but it was published in 1752 with Thomson’s name attached to it, and the evidence is on the whole in favour of the usual attribution.

The feeling which inspired Thomson’s opposition to Walpole’s Government, and his attack on its pusillanimous policy towards Spain, was shared by the populace in general. It appears also in a satire called The Pacific Fleet (p. 170).

The popularity of the war with Spain is brought out by The English Sailor’s Resolution to Fight the Spaniards. It dwells on the grievances of the merchants, tells the story of Captain Jenkins’s ear, and ends by an appeal to enter under Haddock (p. 172). This probably refers to the sending of Rear-Admiral Nicholas Haddock to the Mediterranean in 1737, when war was expected. A New Song, written after the actual outbreak of hostilities, begins by rejoicing that King George has at length resolved to correct the violence of the Spaniards:

War was actually declared by England against Spain on October 23, 1739, and the general satisfaction with which that step was welcomed is shown by England’s Glory in the Declaration of War (see p. 174).

The first engagement of importance in European waters took place on April 8, 1740, when the Princesa, a Spanish 70-gun ship, was taken by three of Vice-Admiral Balchen’s squadron, viz., the Lenox, the Kent, and the Orford (Clowes, iii. 267). The part assigned to the Irish first lieutenant of the Princesa and his fellow-countrymen on board her is a new fact, if it is true (p. 175).

Before this capture took place Vernon, on November 21, 1739, had taken Porto Bello. No event in our naval history called forth more indifferent verse. On p. 177 will be found a ballad, entitled English Courage Displayed, said to be written by a seaman on board the Burford, Vernon’s flagship. Hosier’s Ghost (p. 179), which is the most famous of all the celebrations of Vernon’s victory, was an attempt to turn it to political profit, and to assist in the attack which the ‘Patriots’ were making on Walpole’s policy by recalling Vice-Admiral Francis Hosier’s blockade of Porto Bello in 1726–7 and the heavy losses which it entailed. ‘It is doubtful,’ says Clowes, ‘whether any other British fleet ever suffered from disease so severely as that of Hosier suffered in 1726–7. Its horrible experiences made a deep and lasting impression upon the nation; and it may be hoped that they have had the effect of impressing upon all later British admirals the supreme importance of taking systematic and rigorous measures for preserving the health of their men. During the two years immediately following Hosier’s first arrival off the Bastimentos, the fleet, the nominal complement of which never, roughly speaking, exceeded 4,750 persons, lost, in addition to a flag officer and 7 or 8 captains, about 50 lieutenants and 4,000 subordinate officers and men, by various forms of sickness’ (The Royal Navy, iii. 45).

Vernon attempted to follow up the capture of Porto Bello by taking Cartagena. He bombarded that city for three days in March 1740, but without producing much effect, and made a more serious attack upon it by sea and land in March 1741. The attack began on March 9. Fort San Luis was taken on the night of March 25 and Fort San José followed. But quarrels broke out between the naval and military commanders. The attempted storm of Fort San Lazar failed, and on April 14 it was determined to abandon the siege and re-embark the troops and guns. At the beginning of April, however, the fall of the place seemed imminent, and its capture was actually the subject of two ballads. One, entitled British Courage Displayed, or Admiral Vernon’s Taking of Carthagena, is modelled on the ballad on the taking of Porto Bello bearing the same title. The other, entitled Vernon’s Glory, will be found on p. 181.

Three ballads in this selection relate to the general actions which took place during the war. Admiral Mathews’s Engagement against the Combined Fleets of France and Spain narrates the indecisive battle of February 11, 1744, which led to the trials of Mathews himself, Vice-Admiral Lestock, and several captains. The author was evidently a partisan of Mathews (p. 186). The Lucky Sailor, or the Sailor’s Invitation to go with Admiral Anson, celebrates the victory of Anson and Warren over the French fleet under La Jonquière on May 3, 1747 (p. 195). Hawke’s victory over M. de l’Etenduère on October 14, 1747, is the subject of Tit for Tat, A Sea Kick for a Land Cuff (p. 197). A song on the taking of Port Louis in Hispaniola by Rear-Admiral Charles Knowles, in March 1748, closes the series (p. 199). Several ballads relate to minor actions. Captain Holmes in the Sapphire on January 15, 1743, destroyed five Spanish privateers in Vigo Harbour. The ballad, written by a sailor who lost his arm in the action, dates it January 1744 (p. 184). The true date is given in Samuel Boyse’s An Historical Review of the Transactions of Europe from the beginning of the war with Spain in 1739, published in 1747, vol. i. p. 390; and in Beatson’s Naval and Military Memoirs, i. 173. During 1744 two small merchantmen fought extraordinarily gallant and successful actions against French privateers, which were celebrated in contemporary ballads (pp. 187, 189).

‘In January Captain Cobb in the Bacchus, bound from Oporto to Lynn, being attacked by a Spanish privateer, of ten guns and 120 men, maintained a fight of four hours, with only fourteen men and two boys; and though the privateer boarded him, he cleared his ship by killing several of the enemy. Soon after, one of his shot took place so luckily, that the privateer suddenly foundered, and all he could do was to save about thirty of the Spaniards, who the next day treacherously rose upon him. However, after an obstinate fight, in which eleven were killed, he subdued the rest and brought them into Dartmouth, where this brave man died of the wounds he received in this last action.

‘In June, one Richard Hornby, master of a small vessel bound from Yarmouth to Rotterdam, mounting six guns, and having only five men and three boys, was attacked on the coast of Holland by the Marquis de Brancos, a French privateer of eighteen guns and seventy-five men, against whom he defended himself bravely for four hours, repulsing the enemy, who attempted to board him twice. At length a shot of his entering the privateer’s powder-room, she blew up, and all her crew perished. This action being represented by the Lords of the Admiralty to his Majesty, he was pleased to reward Captain Hornby with a gold chain and medal of 200l. value.’

(Boyse, ii. 114.)

To this period also belong several ballads commemorating disasters at sea, or escapes from shipwreck. Admiral Cavendish’s distress on board the Canterbury (p. 168) must have been written in the year 1728. It is interesting because its metre is probably an imitation of that of You Gentlemen of England, while the refrain, ‘In the Bay of Biscay O,’ evidently inspired the well-known song of that name written by Andrew Cherry (Stone, Sea Songs, p. 32). The latter was first sung by Incledon in an operatic sketch entitled Spanish Dollars, which was produced in April 1805.

Another ballad dealing with a similar subject is The Princess Royal’s Escape from the Goodwin Sands, written by a sailor on board the ship, and describing a storm which took place in February 1744 (p. 190). Two others deal with the loss of Sir John Balchen and the Victory, a first-rate carrying 108 guns, wrecked on the Caskets on October 4, 1744. About a thousand men perished with Balchen (pp. 192–94).

The War of the Austrian Succession closed with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in October 1748.

The Seven Years’ War commenced in America and India, and spread to Europe. War between France and England was not declared till May 18, 1756, though on June 8, 1755, Boscawen’s fleet captured two French men of war, the Alcide and the Lys, off Newfoundland. As early as February 1755 there was ‘a hot press’ for seamen, and in July Hawke was sent to sea with eighteen ships to intercept the French fleet under Du Guay, and to make reprisals upon French commerce. The story of The Lighterman’s Prentice relates to this cruise (p. 201). Nearly 300 French merchantmen and about 8,000 seamen were captured before the end of 1755 (Entick, History of the Late War i. 137, 187). Britain’s Resolution to fight the French also refers to these captures, but the exultation they caused lasted but a short time (p. 203). Byng’s action with La Galissonière on May 20 and the capture of Port Mahon which followed on June 29, dashed all these hopes, and popular feeling demanded that the admiral’s misconduct should be punished with death. Every scribbler wrote poems and epigrams against him, and political hostility to the Government swelled the cry.

‘To the block with Newcastle and yard-arm with Byng,’ is the chorus of one ballad appropriately entitled Block and Yard-arm. A collection of these was published at the time: Bungiana; or an Assemblage of What-d’ye-call-em’s in prose and verse that have occasionally appeared relative to the conduct of a certain naval commander, 1756. The French commander’s conduct was not thought much better than Byng’s, and one of the squibs in this collection satirises both. It is entitled The Pacific Engagement, a poetical dialogue between two courteous admirals.

Byng’s despatch was frequently parodied in verse, and one of these parodies, The Letter of a certain Admiral, is given on p. 207, together with A Rueful Story (p. 209). Blakeney became the hero of the hour, and a naval officer who had served in the defence of Fort St. Philip was glorified with him in A New Song (p. 206). Another ballad handed down to tradition, of which the tune as well as the words has been preserved, accused Byng of selling Port Mahon, and contrasted his treachery with the courage of West (p. 210).

Next year another fiasco excited popular feeling to fury, namely the abortive ‘secret expedition’ to Rochefort in September 1757. The navy did its part in capturing the isle of Aix; the ships could not get near enough to batter Rochefort, and the soldiers were never landed. Sir John Mordaunt, the commander of the troops, was acquitted by a court-martial. The New Song written on the Isle of Aix (p. 211) is apparently intended to represent the feelings of Hawke, who was vexed and indignant at the decision of the generals not to attempt a landing (Burrows, Life of Hawke, ed. 1896, p. 138).

The year 1758 was more fortunate, but neither Pocock’s engagements in the East Indies nor the capture of Louisbourg are the subject of ballads which have reached us. Keppel’s expedition against the French colonies in Africa attracted more attention. One ballad, Bold Sawyer, relates the capture of Goree, which took place December 28, 1758 (Entick, iii. 271–8). While it gives the names of the ships engaged in the expedition correctly, it calls the captain of the Nassau Sawyer, though his name was James Sayer. Another ballad relates the fate of the Lichfield, Captain Barton, which ran ashore on the coast of Morocco on November 29, 1758 (p. 214). The crew were made slaves, and were not released till April 1760, when they were ransomed for 170,000 dollars by a special ambassador sent for the purpose (Duncan, The Mariner’s Chronicle, iii. 118–30).

The year 1759 was the great year of the war. On August 18 Boscawen defeated De la Clue, taking three ships of the line and destroying two. On November 20 Hawke beat Conflans in Quiberon Bay. Hawke’s victory is the theme of a ballad apparently written by someone on board the flagship (p. 217). Neptune’s Resignation, a pretentious mythological poem ‘written by Mr. Wagnall’ is interesting as a curiosity (p. 218). Twenty-three years later it was adapted to fit Rodney’s victory. Two other pieces of verse—one composed by Paul Whitehead and sung by Mr. Beard at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, the other by Robert English, chaplain of the Royal George—are reprinted in Hawke’s Life (pp. 253–56). ‘Though the rude billows raged,’ sang the chaplain, ‘so close we engaged

Boscawen and Hawke had effectively ended the French threats of invasion, for which purpose a number of flat-bottomed boats had been built (Entick, iii. 403; v. 50). It is to this project that Garrick contemptuously refers in Hearts of Oak, a song in his pantomime Harlequin’s Invasion, which was produced on December 31, 1759. The text of the song is so altered in the current versions that it seemed desirable to print it in its original form (p. 220). The only French landing effected took place in Ireland. In October 1759 M. Thurot, with six frigates and 1,300 troops, eluding the squadron under Commodore Boys, which was blockading that port, set out on his adventurous cruise. The weather frustrated an intended descent near Londonderry, but on February 21 he landed some troops at Carrickfergus, but put to sea again after occupying the place for six days. Next day, on February 28, Captain John Elliot, with the Aeolus, Pallas, and Brilliant frigates, engaged the three ships that were left of Thurot’s squadron, and captured them all (Clowes iii. 230; Entick iv. 319–333). Thurot fell in the fight, and the ballad called Thurot’s Dream records his fate (p. 220). This is one of the rare cases in which oral tradition has preserved a better version of the original piece than any of the printed broadsides.

Another minor action of much interest, which took place a year earlier, is the subject of the ballad entitled Gilchrist and Hotham’s Bravery (p. 216). On March 20, 1759, the Southampton, 32, Captain James Gilchrist, and the Melampe, 24, Captain William Hotham, engaged two French frigates and captured one of them, the Danae, a 40-gun ship (Clowes, iii. 301; Entick, iv. 266). The capture of three French privateers in the West Indies by Captain O’Brien and Captain Taylor in August 1760 furnished another theme for indifferent verse (p. 222, cf. Entick, v. 55).

After 1759 there were no fleet actions in European waters. Hawke, Boscawen, and Rodney blockaded the western ports of France through 1760. In June 1761 the island of Belleisle surrendered to a naval and military force commanded by General Hodgson and Commodore Keppel. This conquest is the subject of A New Song on the Taking of Belleisle, but the song touches only the service of the soldiers. Pitt meant to tender the island as an equivalent for Minorca in the negotiations for peace which began about this time. For the rest of the war the interest centres in the West Indies. Guadeloupe had fallen in May 1759; Dominica fell in June 1761; Martinique was taken in February 1762, and Grenada, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent with Martinique.

The New Song on the Taking of Martinico thus pictures its effect:

War had been declared against Spain on January 4, 1762, and the squadron which had helped to reduce Martinique now joined an expedition sent from England under Sir George Pocock and the Earl of Albemarle, and laid siege to Havana. The city fell on August 13, 1762, and a ballad on its capture is printed on p. 223. It is remarkable for the badness of its metre and the correctness of its historical details (see Entick, v. 363–385; Clowes iii. 245). With this capture the war ended. The preliminaries of peace were signed on November 3, 1762, the definitive treaty on February 10, 1763.

Peace was welcome news to the sailors. A ballad called The Sailors’ Dialogue, evidently written about this date, expresses their views. ‘When all the ship is paid, we’ll lead a merry life,’ says Jack, and rejoices with Tom over the prospect of a full pocket and plenty of drink (p. 227). It gave them additional satisfaction to think that their officers would not be equally pleased. What Jack thought good news was bad news to admiral, captain, and lieutenant, as the ballad called Distressed Men of War sets forth at length (p. 228). A fact which made it worse was that a very limited number of subordinate officers received half-pay, and that the rates were extremely low (Clowes, ii. 233; iii. 19, 340).

It is evident from a number of ballads, some belonging to the middle, others to the later part of this century, that there was considerable discontent in the navy. The feelings which found expression in The Sea Martyrs, in William III.’s time, were equally strong when George III. began to reign, and were to manifest themselves later in the mutinies of 1797. One perennial complaint was the badness of the provisions and the cheats of the purser. Musty meat, mouldy biscuit, hard, stinking Suffolk cheese, petty-warrant beer, burgoo ‘fit for nothing but to make a sailor spew,’ were what he provided, ‘though the nation allows men what’s fitting to eat.’ So says The Saylor’s Complaint; or the true Character of the Purser of a Ship (p. 233), and every casual reference to a purser in any ballad is always abusive.

A still greater grievance was the difficulty a man had in getting his pay:

is the sum of a second Sailor’s Complaint (p. 230). Often the sailor received a ticket for his pay, which he was obliged to sell to an usurer at a ruinous reduction—a practice which had existed since the time of Charles II., as Pepys witnesses, but which seems to have been checked towards the middle of the eighteenth century, according to The Ticket-Buyer’s Lamentation (p. 231).

A third grievance was the severity of the discipline. A pamphlet quoted by Entick (v. 59) explains why it is that neither by bounty nor compulsion men enough for the fleet can be found. ‘The reason is known to every common seaman, who, whilst Gazettes are filled with encomiums of their bravery and contempt of danger, and our senators are devising the wisest means for their provision and support, yet languish under the greatest hardships and the most abject slavery, puzzled and perplexed with unnecessary trifles, hard wrought, and ill-used by almost every petty officer of but a month’s standing, who, ignorant of duty, whether performed right or wrong, flourishes his rattan over the head of the ablest seaman, and acts the tyrant over them without control.’

Even ‘snotty boys of midshipmen,’ some hardly ten years old, declares one ballad, ‘strike many a brave fellow.’ In another a sailor declines to volunteer, and gives a captain his reason:

Ill usage made volunteers scarce and increased the discontent of pressed men. Complaints against impressment, and references to the abuses to which it gave rise, become increasingly frequent during the latter half of the eighteenth century. The pressgang makes its first appearance in fiction in 1748 with Smollet’s account of the seizure of Roderick Random on Tower Hill, and his sufferings in the tender. The earliest caricature representing the operations of a press-gang is English Liberty Displayed, which belongs to the year 1770, when Wilkes and the London magistrates were opposing the execution of press warrants in the City (Catalogue of Satirical Prints in the British Museum, iv. 641). Next came Gillray’s Liberty of the Subject, published October 15, 1779. Our ballads supplement this evidence by stories such as those related in The Lighterman’s Prentice and in the narrative of the eighteen Greenland men (pp. 201, 226, 234–36, 249). Another ballad called a Dialogue between Will and Jack, too long to insert, describes the general terror which prevailed about 1778 or 1779. The people seem all run mad, ‘for fear of the press they won’t lie in their beds’; farmers and millers send boys and girls and old men to the markets for them; carriers and carters, ‘like goats in the mountains, they lie in the fields’; and so with all other trades. The French are at sea to invade us, and now our bold sailors must fight for all. The King wants men and will find them out.

The King found it difficult to get men, not merely because his service was unpopular, but also because there was a more profitable alternative.

One characteristic of the wars of the middle of the eighteenth century was the great development of privateering. ‘The privateers,’ writes Sir J. K. Laughton, ‘were, in their day, a most important item in the naval strength of the country, with this additional and especial merit, that they were most numerous and strongest when the royal navy was weakest or most severely taxed.... In looking for valuable services of privateers we find them not in the periods of our national glory, not during the wars of the French Revolution, when Howe and Hood and Nelson crushed the French navy; not during the later years of the Seven Years’ War, when Hawke and Boscawen and Saunders grandly maintained England’s supremacy; but during the war of American Independence or the war of the Austrian Succession, when the fortunes of the navy were at a low ebb.... In such times of disaster and disgrace the rough and ready work of the privateers appeared more brilliant, and had a very real national importance’ (Studies in Naval History, p. 201). Of two famous privateer captains, Fortunatus Wright and George Walker, the same author gives a full account, and the exploits of many others are recorded in The Liverpool Privateers, published by Mr. Gomer Williams in 1897. Their captures and their battles were sometimes the subject of verse, and therefore a few examples of ballads relating to them have been inserted. In July 1745, Captain Talbot in the Prince Frederick, with Captain Morecock in the Duke, captured two Spanish ships with cargoes worth over 3,000,000 dollars. The share of each seaman amounted to £850 (Laughton, p. 237; Beatson, Naval and Military Memoirs, i. 294; Boyse, An Historical Review of the Transactions of Europe, ii. 171). This capture is celebrated in England’s Glory, or the French King Stripped (p. 194). At the beginning of the Seven Years’ War the Terrible privateer, commanded by Captain Death, was taken by the French privateer Vengeance, of St. Malo, on December 27, 1756. The Terrible had twenty-six guns, the Vengeance thirty-four. The crew of the Vengeance numbered 350, while the Terrible, weakened by sending away some men in a prize, could muster only 116. Out of them the captain and fifty men were killed outright, and over forty wounded before the ship was taken (Entick, History of the Late War, 1765, ii. 110). So desperate a fight, at a moment when the popular indignation against Byng for not fighting it out with La Galissonière was at its height, naturally roused enthusiasm, and Captain Death and the Terrible were celebrated in the ballad and the poem printed on pp. 204–5.

A common form of song is one which takes the form of an invitation to enter on board a privateer under some popular captain. Of this there are many specimens in existence, and two are here reprinted (pp. 225, 226). The Lord Anson and the Hawke were two Liverpool privateers which made many captures in 1756 and 1757 (Williams, pp. 87–95). The Blandford was a Bristol ship, though Captain Stonehouse seems to have been a Liverpool man (ib. p. 186). In these and similar invitations the prospect of plunder naturally holds the first place. A Newcastle song says:

(Rhymes of Northern Bards, by John Bell, 1812, p. 320). Another song, called The Sailor’s Courtship to the Lady’s Waiting-Maid, treats the argument sentimentally:

(Madden Collection, Cambridge). The prospect of manning a privateer depended a good deal on the reputation of its commander, and consequently his character was often set forth, as in the ballad called after Captain Barber of the ship Resolution of Liverpool:

(Madden Collection). Or again in A New Song:

When the American war began, the British public expected a series of easy victories—at all events wherever the navy was engaged. The ballad called The Brags of Washington is an instance of this (p. 244). Consequently the repulse of the fleet under Sir Peter Parker, which attacked Charleston on June 28, 1776, was a disagreeable surprise. It is the theme of an English ballad, On the late Engagement in Charleston River, and of an American song parodying Parker’s despatch (pp. 245–47; cf. Clowes, iii. 372). In February 1778 France concluded a defensive treaty with the United States, and in April hostilities between France and England began. The Cruisers celebrates the beginning of this stage of the war; The Arethusa its first action, namely, the fight between that ship and the Belle Poule on June 17, 1778 (pp. 247–248). The song, according to Sir J. K. Laughton, ‘sets truth and seamanship alike at defiance,’ for the Arethusa fought well but was beaten, and would certainly have been taken or sunk if the approach of the English seventy-fours had not scared the Belle Poule away (Sea Fights and Adventures, p. 8). It is to be observed that the crew of the Belle Poule numbered 230 not 500 men, that she was not driven ashore, and that she was ultimately taken by the Nonsuch, 64 guns, in 1780 (Clowes, iv. 13, 99, 114). To the same date or to 1777 belongs a song On the brave Admiral Lockhart, printed in Logan’s Pedlar’s Pack (p. 77). Lockhart took the command of the Shrewsbury in 1777. The verses are to be sung to the tune of Hearts of Oak.

The Shrewsbury formed part of the Channel fleet under Admiral Keppel. When Keppel first put to sea on June 12, 1778, the public voice confidently predicted his success, as Admiral Keppel Triumphant shows (p. 252). On July 27 he engaged the French fleet under d’Orvilliers off Ushant. Two songs give an account of this indecisive engagement, one of which accounts for its indecisiveness by asserting that Keppel had secret orders not to fight (pp. 253, 255). Then followed recriminations between Keppel and Vice-admiral Sir Hugh Palliser, ending with the trial of Keppel by court-martial on the charges of misconduct and incapacity. On February 11, 1779, he was acquitted, and the charges were pronounced malicious and unfounded. The popularity of the verdict is attested by Keppel Triumphant and Keppel for Ever (pp. 255, 257).

In June 1779 Spain declared war, and during August 1779 the combined French and Spanish fleets dominated the Channel. Paul Jones, who had already signalised himself in 1778 by attacking Whitehaven and capturing the British sloop Drake off Carrickfergus, sailed from L’Orient on August 14, 1779, with a little squadron of four vessels threatened Leith and Edinburgh, and projected an attack on the shipping in the Tyne. On September 23 he fell in with a fleet of merchant shipping coming from the Baltic under the convoy of the Serapis of forty-four guns and the Countess of Scarborough, a hired vessel armed with twenty six-pounders. The capture of these two ships by Jones is celebrated in Paul Jones the Pirate. This ballad was evidently written by an American or someone sympathising with the American cause. It was often reprinted in England, but the English versions are full of corruptions and blunders. Nevertheless, by comparison of the various versions, it has proved possible to obtain a more intelligible text than that commonly given (p. 259). Several other ballads, including a Scottish one on the same subject, are reprinted in the Roxburghe Ballads, and with them a political song suggesting that Lord Sandwich and Lord North were in reality worse enemies to England than Jones (Roxburghe Ballads, viii. 330–35).

As the struggle was for America and the West Indian islands, most of the fleet engagements of the latter part of the war took place in American waters. On July 6, 1779, Vice-admiral John Byron, with Vice-admiral Samuel Barrington as his second in command, fought an action with the French fleet under D’Estaing off Grenada, and got very much the worst of the fight. A ballad on the battle, apparently written by someone on board the Royal Oak, expresses the view generally held in the fleet, that if Barrington had commanded instead of Byron the result would have been different (p. 258; cf. Clowes, iii. 434–40; Mahan, p. 367). The Bold Blades of Old England celebrates the capture of Omoa in October 1779, and concludes by a reference to Rodney’s voyage to Gibraltar in December 1779 and his capture of a Spanish convoy about January 8, 1780 (p. 261; cf. Clowes, iii. 448; iv. 44). On January 16, 1780, Rodney defeated Langara off Cape St. Vincent, taking six Spanish ships of the line. Another, the Santo Domingo, was blown up Prince William was serving at the time on board the Prince George, the flagship of Rear-admiral Robert Digby, which formed part of Rodney’s fleet. Reports of the courage and good conduct of the Prince during the battle increased the popular enthusiasm which welcomed Rodney’s victory, and inspired the song entitled The Royal Sailor (p. 262). On April 12, 1782, took place Rodney’s victory over De Grasse, which brought the naval war to a conclusion. It is the subject of a singularly ungrammatical ballad called Rodney’s Glory, and of another entitled Hood’s Conquest over the Count de Grasse, in which Rodney’s name is not even mentioned (p. 263). Rodney captured five line-of-battle ships in the battle. Four of them, with three English 74-gun ships, sailed from Jamaica for England at the end of July 1782, but all save two were lost on the way. Two of the prizes, the Ville de Paris and the Glorieux, foundered with all hands; a third, the Hector, was lost, though 200 of the crew were saved by the privateer Hawke. One of the English seventy-fours, the Ramillies, became unseaworthy, lost all her masts, and was abandoned. Another, the Centaur, went down with all her crew except twelve men on September 23, 1782. The ballad called The Loss of the Centaur (p. 265) commemorates the escape of Captain Inglefield and the twelve survivors (Laughton, Sea Fights and Adventures, p. 153; Clowes, iv. 88).

Several ballads of the period relate to engagements between single ships. Captain Farmer (p. 260) describes the hard-fought encounter between the Quebec and Surveillante off Ushant on October 6, 1779. The Quebec took fire and blew up, and Captain George Farmer went down with his ship.

Others relate to the fortunes of American privateers. On the American side the laureate of the war was Philip Freneau, whose poems appeared for the most part in newspapers published in America during the war. They were collected and published at Philadelphia in 1786, and republished in England in 1861 by Russell Smith. Many refer to incidents in the naval war. One is Captain Jones’s Invitation to American Backwoodsmen to become Sailors; another, On the Memorable Victory gained by the gallant Captain Paul Jones, narrates his capture of the Serapis. There are Stanzas on the new American frigate Alliance; On the Death of Captain Nicholas Biddle, commander of the Randolph, a 32-gun frigate, blown up in action with the British 64-gun ship Yarmouth on March 7, 1778. A third poem, The British Prison Ship, tells of the capture of the American privateer Aurora by the Iris (once the American frigate Hancock) and the sufferings of the prisoners on board the hulks Scorpion and Hunter. The Sailor’s Invitation is an encouragement to ship under Captain Barney on board the Hyder Ally privateer; another ballad, describes the capture of the sloop General Monk by the Hyder Ally on April 8, 1782. (Freneau’s Poems, pp. 144, 146, 164, 183, 235, 239, 241.) Another collection, Songs and Ballads of the American Revolution, edited by Frank Moore, 1856, contains a satirical letter in verse describing the capture of the South Carolina, a 40-gun frigate, by the British ships Diomede and Quebec on December 20, 1782 (Clowes, iv. 91).

The major operations of the war of the French Revolution and the general engagements are illustrated by numerous ballads, though for the most part of very inferior quality.

begins Success to the Grand Fleet, or the Honest Briton’s Prayer, announcing Hood’s departure for Toulon in August 1793. But the rest is too poor to quote. The temper of the moment is illustrated by some lines from The Taking of Tobago (April 1793), which declares that ‘for murdering of Louis we will make these rebels rue.’ But for the most part very little sign of any feeling against the French as revolutionists appears in popular naval poetry; it is simply the old national hostility. ‘We’ll make them to knock under as we have done before,’ says the same ballad.

Howe’s victory on June 1, 1794, is the subject of at least half a dozen ballads, two of which, with a song written by a lieutenant on board the Bellerophon, will be found on pp. 268–74.

The battle of St. Vincent on February 14, 1797, is celebrated in A new song on the victory over the Spanish Fleet by Admiral Jervis, and in Jervis taking the Spanish Fleet. According to the author of the first, the tactics of the British ships were simple:

The second thus sums up the result:

Neither deserves reprinting. Duncan was more fortunate than Jervis, and at least four ballads on Camperdown have survived. One by J. Pratt will be found on p. 283. Another by J. More, of the Royal Ayr Volunteers, to be sung to the tune of The Garb of Old Gaul, is printed in Ashton’s Real Sailor Songs (p. 9). In one of the ballads Duncan’s religion is commended:

In the fourth a subscription for the widows of those who fell in the battle is advocated:

On the battle of the Nile the two most popular ballads—to judge from the frequency of the reprints—were The Mouth of the Nile and Battle of the Nile. The former begins:

The whole is reprinted in Ashton’s Real Sailor Songs. The other poem, more pretentious in style concludes with a sort of apotheosis:

Of much greater interest than these is a long narrative ballad, said to have comprised about sixty verses, of which tradition has preserved merely a fragment. From the exactness of the details, it was probably written by some sailor in the fleet. All that survives is printed on p. 287.

The battle of Copenhagen is the theme of two ballads of the ordinary type (pp. 295, 296). To these has been added the original version of Campbell’s Battle of the Baltic, which he enclosed in a letter to Sir Walter Scott written on March 27, 1805 (p. 290). ‘Though wanting,’ says Sir J. K. Laughton, ‘the polish which afterwards brought it to something like perfection, though many of the lines are bald, harsh, or tumid, some of the expressions are happier than in the finished work; and, though we do not go to a ballad for historical detail, it is fuller and more accurate’ (The Nelson Memorial, p. 196). Campbell was in a special sense the laureate of the war which resulted from the coalition known as the Armed Neutrality of 1801, and he published in the Morning Chronicle of March 18, 1801, his ballad Ye Mariners of England headed On the Prospect of a Russian War. The original of this, which differs only in a few unimportant phrases from the later version, is to be found in Laughton’s Nelson Memorial, p. 175, and in Beattie’s Life of Campbell. It is needless to reprint it here.

Nelson’s next engagement was not against the Russians, as he expected, but against the French flotilla which lay in the harbour of Boulogne prepared for the invasion of England. This disastrous attempt was made on August 15, 1801, and is the subject of A New Song composed by the wounded Tars (p. 297). It was evidently meant to appeal to the charitable, and the lines:

are a too familiar ballad formula. There are many other ballads of the period ending with similar appeals. Two examples will suffice:

The last action of importance before the peace of Amiens was that between Linois and Sir James Saumarez in the Straits of Gibraltar on July 12, 1801 (Clowes, iv. 466). The ballad on it is a parody of the despatch in which Linois is said to have represented his escape as a victory (p. 298).

One feature in this war was the attempted invasion of Ireland by the French. A fleet appeared in Bantry Bay under Admiral Morard de Galle in December 1796; a landing was actually effected at Killala on August 22, 1798, by General Humbert; a squadron under Commodore Bompart was engaged by Sir John Borlase Warren on October 12, 1798. A number of ballads relating to these incidents are collected in Crofton Croker’s Popular Songs Illustrative of French Invasions of Ireland, parts iii., iv., published by the Percy Society in 1847, but they are too entirely political in their character. The best is one beginning:

The question asked in these lines formed the basis of a motion made subsequently in Parliament. The author of the ballad answers:

Captain Mahan, however, points out that the inefficiency of the British dispositions against invasion was to blame (Influence of Sea-power upon the French Revolution and Empire, i. 360). The fleet which reached Bantry escaped with impunity excepting the Droits de l’Homme, seventy-four, which fell in with Sir Edward Pellew, in the Indefatigable, forty-four, and Captain Reynolds in the Amazon, thirty-six, was badly mauled, and wrecked with all her crew on the coast of France. This engagement, which took place on January 13, 1798, is celebrated in The Amazon Frigate (p. 276). An earlier exploit of Pellew’s, the capture of the Cleopâtre on June 18, 1793, is also the subject of a ballad (p. 267). The fight between the Pique and the Blanche on June 4, 1795, and that between the Mars and the Hercule, on April 21, 1798, and an action fought by the sloop Arrow in September 1799, are commemorated in the same way (pp. 285, 289).

In the civil history of the navy the great event was the mutiny of 1797, illustrated here by five ballads. The New Song about ‘the seventeen bright stars’ gives a sailor’s history of the origin and progress of the mutiny of the fleet at Spithead, and was evidently written about the end of May (p. 277). British Tars Rewarded expresses the satisfaction of the fleet at the concessions obtained from the Government, and The Genius of Britain shows the sympathy with which the movement was regarded by the Radical politicians of the time (pp. 279, 280). The more dangerous mutiny of the ships at the Nore, which began on May 20 and lasted till about the middle of June, is represented by A New Song on Parker the Delegate and The Death of Parker (pp. 281, 282). The latter is one of the commonest of all ballads relating to the navy, and the frequency with which it was reprinted seems to show that popular feeling was inclined to regard Parker as a hero and a martyr.

The period from the renewal of the war with France in May 1803 to the general peace in 1815 supplies few ballads of any merit, and the more important the event celebrated the worse, as a rule, is the ballad. Trafalgar produced at least a dozen, of which two are selected here—Nelson’s Glorious Victory at Trafalgar, and another, entitled The Death of Nelson, which begins:

(pp. 301, 302). A third, beginning Arise, ye sons of Britain, in chorus join and sing, which usually bears the title of Nelson’s Death and Victory, is reprinted by Mr. Masefield (p. 131), and by Mr. Ashton (p. 18), under the title of The Battle of Trafalgar. Mr. Ashton also prints a fourth entitled Nelson and Collingwood (p. 19). There is yet another Battle of Trafalgar, which begins well:

The rest of the narrative, however, is a mere catalogue of the names of ships.

The Death of Nelson, better known as ’Twas in Trafalgar’s Bay, is from John Braham’s opera entitled The Americans, which was produced at the Lyceum on April 27, 1811. In Bell and Daldy’s Sea Songs and Ballads, 1863 (p. 263), the words are attributed to Samuel James Arnold. There is another Death of Nelson—a rough and ungrammatical popular ballad—which seems to deserve reprinting in spite of its defects, as a testimony to popular feeling in England (p. 302).

Sir Richard Strachan’s victory on November 4, 1805 (Clowes, v. 171), is the next important event celebrated, and it is treated as completing Nelson’s work (p. 304). Clowes describes it as ‘a creditable pendant to Trafalgar’ (The Royal Navy, v. 174). Cochrane’s attempt to destroy the French fleet in the Basque Roads in April 1810 was also made the subject of a song. ‘Cochrane undaunted’ has his due praise; Gambier is not mentioned either for good or evil. The rest of the incidents recorded are cutting out affairs or frigate fights. Yeo’s exploits on the coast of Spain in 1805, and the capture of the Thetis by the Amethyst in November 1808, were both held worthy of recognition in verse (pp. 300, 305; cf. Clowes, v. 362, 427).

In June 1812 the field of the war was widened by President Madison’s declaration of war against England. This provides us with some ballads which give the point of view of England’s opponents, and advantageously supplement the productions of our own soil. A ballad beginning ‘Ye Parliament of England’ states the case of the United States against Great Britain, and summarises the naval history of the war for American hearers (p. 308). ‘It was still,’ says an American, ‘a favourite song in many parts of the country as late as 1859, and it is valuable as a reflection of the spirit in which the war of 1812–14 was regarded by those who fought in it’ (G. C. Eggleston, American War Ballads, 1889, i. 131). The capture of the Guerrière by the Constitution on August 19, 1812, was the subject of an American song subsequently reprinted as a broadside in London (p. 309). The capture of the Chesapeake by the Shannon in June 1, 1813, was the subject of three English ballads, two of which are here reprinted (p. 311). The metre of the best known is the same as that of the song on the Constitution and Guerrière, and one was evidently intended as an answer to the other, though it appears uncertain which was published first. The last of the series narrates the capture of the President on January 15, 1815, and is called The Endymion’s Triumph. It just mentions the existence of the rest of the squadron, but does not attribute any part in the result of the fight to the Pomone or the Tenedos (p. 313).

Peace was not wholly welcome either to the younger officers or to some of the sailors. In 1815, as in 1763 there were some who openly expressed their regret. One example is a parody of Dibdin, entitled The Midshipman’s Lamentation. It begins ‘What is it to you if my eye I am piping?’ If the peace is a fact he trembles to think what his next station will be:

No resource will be left him except to turn shoe-black:

A sailor took a more cheerful view of the situation:

As at every peace, there were complaints that when the sailor was no more needed a thankless country turned him adrift to starve. The British Tars enforces this moral (p. 316). Sailors who remained in the service had a different cause of complaint, namely, the increasing strictness of discipline in minor matters. ‘About 1806,’ says Clowes, on the authority of Lord Dundonald, ‘undue prominence began to be assigned to what is still vulgarly called in the service “spit and polish.” Too much importance was attached to “the brightening of brass heads, of bitts, and capstan hoops,” and too little to the condition of the ship as a fighting machine’ (Royal Navy, v. 19). After the peace this tendency increased, and the discomforts of a sailor’s life in a smart ship with a martinet for her captain became the theme of several ballads. The Fancy Frigate, The Saucy Scylla, and The Vanguard are examples of this (pp. 316–21).

An older grievance now ended. Impressment had risen to its height during the great war with France. In a volume of Northumbrian Minstrelsy published by the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle-upon-Tyne are many songs referring to the press-gang.

Another is a woman’s lament:

A certain Captain Bover was particularly energetic in pressing men, of whom a sailor and his lass thus sing:

When the war ended the press-gang lost its very real terrors, though their memory long survived in tradition. It became a subject for sentimental or burlesque treatment, as in Oh Cruel! and the Answer to that song. Its special function in the sentimental ballads printed during the first half of the nineteenth century was to prevent the course of true love from running smooth:

A villainous rival invariably availed himself of its assistance:

It afforded opportunities for the more romantic forms of the sentimental ballad, in which the maid disguised herself as a sailor in order to accompany her lover when he was pressed to sea. There are several seventeenth and eighteenth century ballads about disguised women who served as sailors, and there are some genuine instances. One of them, Hannah Snell, became celebrated, and about 1750 attracted crowds to hear her sing a song describing her adventures (p. 200). In the street ballads of the early nineteenth century the theme is a perpetual favourite. Other ballads of the same period celebrated the courage or dexterity with which the maiden contrived to obtain her lover’s release. The most celebrated example of this class of ballad is Billy Taylor, which is a parody on an earlier romantic ballad entitled sometimes William Taylor, sometimes The Female Lieutenant (pp. 326–27). Another example is Cawsand Bay (p. 328), which is a late imitation of an older ballad called either The Valiant Maid or The Undaunted Lieutenant.

Impressment ceased about 1835, though not formally abolished, and its cessation seems to have been somehow connected in the popular mind with King William IV. His sympathy with sailors was the theme of several street songs. The King and the Sailor celebrates his affability; Duke William’s Frolic narrates how he had learned to sympathise with the sufferings of sailors by being himself impressed. Both are reprinted in John Ashton’s Modern Street Ballads, pp. 228, 232.

During the great war, the patriotic sea-song and songs about sailors, such as those written by the Dibdins and their imitators, had attained enormous popularity on shore, and some at sea too. Charles Dibdin’s first naval song, Blow high, blow low, was produced about 1776, and he continued to produce till about 1810. It was said by a biographer that ‘he brought more men into the navy in war time than all the press-gangs could,’ and he boasted in his autobiography, ‘My songs have been the solace of sailors in long voyages, in storm, in battle; and they have been quoted in mutinies to the restoration of order and discipline (Autobiography, i. 8). Except in a very few cases, such as Tom Bowling, this popularity was not lasting. ‘It is doubtful,’ says Sir C. Bridge, ‘if they were even very popular in the forecastle. At places of entertainment on shore, some of them may have been heard with pleasure by seamen, but the great majority of them were either never favourites afloat, or at any rate had but a short-lived popularity. By the middle of the nineteenth century, when the old fore-bitter had still a vigorous existence, C. Dibdin’s songs were very rarely sung on board ship’ (Introduction to Stone’s Sea Songs and Ballads, p. xiii).

Novelists and playwrights imitated Dibdin. Captain Marryat, who brought together a few genuine old songs in Poor Jack, inserted some nautical songs of his own composition in Snarleyow, the best of which is reprinted in this collection (p. 322). Others, apparently never published, which include defences of flogging and impressment, are to be found in his Life by his daughter. Captain Chamier, who published between 1830 and 1849 a number of novels in imitation of Marryat, included in them many nautical songs of his own of little merit. Captain Glascock also in his novels and sketches of naval life printed various lyrics. One seems to be the expression of a genuine feeling, viz. The Lieutenant’s Lament:

Of nautical plays an enormous number were produced during the first half of the nineteenth century. This species of drama reached its greatest vogue about 1830. The most successful example of it was Douglas Jerrold’s Black-eyed Susan; or, All in the Downs, played at the Surrey Theatre in 1829. Another successful play was Fitzball’s Pilot, an adaptation of Cooper’s novel of the same name, in which the hero was transformed from an American into an English sailor. The success of both was due to the acting of T. P. Cooke, who had himself served some six years in the navy and was declared by Christopher North to be ‘the best sailor that ever trod the stage.’ ‘Mr. Cooke,’ says Fitzball in his preface to The Pilot, ‘added a new feature to the sailor’s character. It was that of thoughtfulness and mystery—of deep-toned passion and romance.’

The popularity and the prevalence of conventional representations of sailors and artificial naval lyrics seem to have put an end to the production of genuine sea songs. In the vast mass of street songs issued by various printers between 1815 and 1870 there are many about sailors at sea and on shore, but they are mostly amatory or romantic. The most interesting are stories about shipwrecks or crudely realistic ditties about sprees on shore which illustrate the history of the merchant service rather than the navy. Such titles as The Liverpool Landlady, The Sailor’s Frolic or Life in the East, and Rolling Down Wapping are a sufficient indication of their contents. Amongst this miscellaneous mass there are a few ballads relating to incidents in naval history occurring between 1815 and the Crimean war. They are poor things, lacking in the spirit and the vigorous realism which often redeem the doggerel verses of the previous century.

For that reason it will suffice to quote a few of those which survive, and to print half a dozen of the best as specimens.

The bombardment of Algiers by Lord Exmouth on August 27, 1816, was the first important naval event after the peace of 1815. It is narrated in a ballad printed by James Catnach, in which a sailor who had served on board the Superb undertook to tell ‘how we fought like any lions bold to set the Christians free.’ Three verses may be quoted:

Then comes a catalogue of the rest of the fleet, in which the six Dutch frigates taking part in the action are not forgotten. ‘Take pattern by those English lads, they show you gallant play,’ said the Dutch admiral to his crews.

The last verse concluded with healths to Lord Exmouth and to Captain Atkins (or properly Captain Charles Ekins) of the Superb.

The battle of Navarino, fought on October 20, 1827, inspired several ballads. The Battle of Navarino, which will be found at length in John Ashton’s Modern Street Ballads, 1888, p. 225, begins thus:

It concludes with a cheer ‘for the staunch gallant crew, That manned the brave ship the Genoa’—a 76-gun ship whose captain, Walter Bathurst, was killed in the battle—on board of which the author perhaps served.

A second, entitled The Glorious Victory of Navarino, gives more details:

A fragment of a third ballad, said to consist of seventeen verses in all, is quoted by Mr. Kipling in The Black Sheep:

The intervention of England in the Syrian war in 1840, which fills so large a place in James Hannay’s naval novel, Singleton Fontenoy, produced a ballad on The Capture of St. Jean d’Acre which will be found on p. 333. It attributes all the credit of the success to Charles Napier, and makes no mention at all of Sir Robert Stopford. It seems to have been written or at least inspired by someone serving on board the Wasp, from the particularity with which it relates the movements of that ship.

The popularity of Napier comes out very plainly in the whole group of street songs and ballads relating to the Crimean war.

ran the chorus of a song which a friend of mine heard some sailors singing in the streets in 1854. Give it to him, Charley, is the title of another; I am Baltic Charley and no Mistake, is that of a third. In this last, the author, through the form of a dialogue, expresses the sympathy of the British public with the admiral in his quarrel with Sir James Graham:

Another series of this Russian group consists of sentimental verses. Bold Napier, for instance, begins:

Similar in type is Jack and Susan and Long Life to Sir Charles Napier. Bolder is The Baltic Lovers, which relates how a merchant’s daughter of Southampton city:

and announced her intention of following him to sea in disguise:

In spite of this discouragement and of the active opposition of her father she entered on board the Wellington, and passed for a long time as a man.

Shedding ‘large briny tears’ she was brought on the quarter-deck before Sir Charles Napier, who was much moved by the spectacle.

And thereupon he discharged Mary and the brisk young sailor and sent both back to England singing ‘God save the Queen and Sir Charles Napier.’

In addition to this there are of course many songs of a purely patriotic nature of which the naval glories of England are in part the theme. The most familiar of them is The Red, White, and Blue. ‘It had a considerable vogue during the Russian war,’ writes Sir J. K. Laughton. ‘I often heard it sung up the Baltic: but of course it is a music-hall song. It was always understood that the ‘red, white, and blue’ meant the three admirals’ flags. Since then it has been taken to mean that these are the national colours—a mistake which has led to a thousand absurdities.’

Out of all the popular songs illustrating the naval side of the Russian war only one deserves reprinting in this volume. That is a song called The Russians won’t come out, which reflects the general disappointment of the navy at the absence of any opportunities for fighting at sea (p. 336).

In order to illustrate the work of the navy during the period which intervened between the close of the French war and the beginning of the Russian war four other ballads have been inserted. One, entitled General Campbell, describes the part taken by the navy in the capture of Rangoon in 1824. A second, The Borneo Heroes, narrates an incident in the suppression of piracy in the Eastern seas, viz. the fight at Malluda Bay on August 19, 1845. The third, entitled The Slave Chase, illustrates the suppression of the slave trade. From the style it is clearly an imitation of one of Macaulay’s Lays; however, it is a spirited thing, and was a great favourite with the late Captain Montagu Burrows, who served for some time in African waters. It was also a popular favourite, and was very often reprinted by Fortey, Such, and the later publishers of street ballads. Arctic exploration is illustrated by a fourth, which celebrates the return of Ross in 1833 and the welcome he received at home (pp. 330–334). Another incident, in the search for the North-West Passage, namely the voyage of Sir John Franklin, and the long continued efforts to discover his fate also attracted the attention of the writers of street ballads; but neither Lady Franklin’s Lament nor the Lament on the Fate of Sir John Franklin and his crew deserve reprinting. The last was written in 1860; ten years later the old street ballads practically became extinct. Once they had been the instrument used to convey information about public events to the people, but that function had now passed to the cheap newspapers. Popular opinion had found other modes of expression, and as songs they had been superseded by the more taking melodies of the music-halls.

Sir Cyprian Bridge speaks of the ‘general taking over of the songs of the music-hall of late by sailors.’ The process began long ago. Captain Glascock in 1834 noted the supersession of the old naval songs by ditties fashionable at the moment on shore.

‘For the whole three years as I sarv’d in that there March-o’-Mind man-o’-war I was tellin’ ye about I never hears so much as a sailor’s song—a song as ye could call a reg’lar built seaman’s stave.’

‘No, Ned, you doesn’t now often hear the staves as we used to sing in the war—you never now hears Will ye go to Cawsin Bay, Billy Bo, Billy Bo!—nor the Saucy Arethusa—nor the Bold Brittany—Black colours under her mizen did fly—From Ushant to Scilly is thirty-five leagues, an’ many more of the sim’lar sort.’

‘No, no, Sam—you’re right enough—your March-o’-Mind men must now come your simmy-dimmy quiv’ring quivers—tip ye soft sentimental touches—sigh away like ladies in love, an’ never sing nothin’ but your silly sicknin’ stuff, as often used to frighten the geese an’ make ’em cackle in the coop, for all the world like the comin’ of a heavy hurricane. Moreover, your March-o’-Mind men never will sing a single stave as admits of the main thing—for what’s a song as won’t allow all hands to jine in reg’lar coal-box? (chorus). No, no, your March-o’-Mind men haven’t, you may depend on it, the mind of men—they think far more like people as rigs it in petticoats, nor they as tog in trowsers. Now what looks more young-ladyish nor to see a fellor with a fist like a shoulder of mutton, flinging his flipper about an’ suitin’ his antics to his song, as he snivels out “Strike—strike the light guitar!”... Then, again, we’d another chap—a chap, too, as big and bulky as a bullock—easin’ it off an’ mincin’ it out like a lank boarding’-school miss—“I’d be a butterfly, born in a bower”’ (Naval Sketch-book, 2nd series, i. 236).

Dana noticed the same phenomenon amongst merchant sailors about 1834. ‘I shall never forget,’ he writes, ‘hearing an old salt who had broken his voice by hard drinking on shore, and bellowing from the mast-head in a hundred north-westers, singing with all manner of ungovernable trills and quavers, in the high notes breaking into rough falsetto, and in the low ones growling along like the dying-away of the boatswain’s “All hands ahoy!” down the hatchway, “Oh no, we never mention him!”[sic]:

The last line he roared out at the top of his voice, breaking each word into half a dozen syllables, This was very popular, and Jack was called on every night to give them his sentimental song’ (Two Years before the Mast, chap. xxix.).

In conclusion it is only necessary to give some short account of the sources from which the present collection has been compiled.

The best account of the collections of old ballads which exist in various public libraries is given by Chappell in the introduction to volume i. of the Roxburghe Ballads, published by the Ballad Society. The British Museum contains the collections known as the Roxburghe and Bagford Ballads, besides others of minor importance. The four volumes of the Roxburghe collection contain 1,466 ballads, the Bagford collection and the smaller ones referred to about 1,500 more. Since 1871, when Mr. Chappell made this estimate, others have been added. The Bodleian Library contains the collections formed by Wood, Ashmole, Rawlinson, and Douce, numbering 1,500 or 1,600. At Cambridge there is the Pepys collection, which consists of 1,800 ballads, and is of special value for naval history, because Pepys, by virtue of his office, was peculiarly interested in that subject. The Society is under great obligations to the Master and Fellows of Magdalene College, Cambridge, for permitting the publication of ten of the Pepysian ballads in this volume, and for allowing the editor the opportunity of thoroughly searching the collection for the purpose. The library of the University of Cambridge possesses a large collection of ballads printed during the eighteenth century and the early part of the nineteenth, which has proved extremely useful as supplementing and continuing the older collections. It was formed by Sir Frederick Madden, and has been hitherto neglected by nearly all students of ballads, but deserves to be searched carefully by anyone interested in the later history of the English ballad.

The University of Glasgow possesses a collection of 408 black-letter ballads presented to it by Mr. Euing. The Euing collection consists mainly of ballads printed during the reign of Charles II., and has supplied several on the Dutch wars and other incidents of the period.

Of collections in private hands, that of the Earl of Crawford has proved particularly useful. The Society is indebted to him for three ballads reprinted in this volume, and the editor has found the catalogue of Lord Crawford’s ballads invaluable throughout his work (Bibliotheca Lindesiana: Catalogue of a Collection of English Ballads of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Privately printed, 1890).