INTRODUCTION

The object of this volume is to bring together a collection of ballads illustrating the history of the British navy from the sixteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century. At every period since the invention of printing the exploits of English sailors found someone to celebrate them in verse. They never wanted a vates sacer of some kind or another, from the poet who preferred to give them immortality in elaborate verses, to the ballad-writer whose rough-hewn lines were merely intended to convey to the people the news of the day, or to represent what the people felt at the moment. It is to the last class of composition that the pieces here reprinted belong. They have a certain limited historical value. Though the details which they have preserved cannot be implicitly trusted, they often contain an element of truth, and it is part of the business of the historian to sift this out. Their evidence may not be evidence of the highest value, but should not be entirely neglected. They tell historians what was felt and what was believed by those who wrote the ballads and those who bought them, show how public opinion was formed, and help to explain the growth of popular traditions.

Besides this, the ballads describe with singular vividness and realism certain aspects of maritime life, and supply a life and colour which is lacking in formal records of administration and official letters. They enable the historian to complete his picture and vivify his narrative, and the ordinary reader to realise the life of the past.

Of the ballads here reprinted a great number were the production of professional composers of ballads who had no direct connection with the navy, and no part in the events they described. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the ballad filled the place which the cheap newspaper fills now, and professional writers put the stirring incidents of the day into verse for the information of the people as naturally as the modern journalist puts them into prose. Most of the older narrative ballads are of this class: for instance, Deloney’s verses on the capture of the Great Galeazzo and the taking of Cadiz. Often the ballad was simply an adaptation of a prose pamphlet on the same subject. In the registers of the Stationers’ Company for the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century there are many examples of this. For instance, on May 15, 1579, Andrew White, a bookseller, entered as his copyright a prose pamphlet relating The Wonderful Victory obtained by the Centurion of London against Five Spanish Gallies, and on the same day registers ‘a ballad of the same victory.’ (Arber, Stationers’ Registers, ii. 274 b.) Often a bookseller entering a prose narrative of this kind provided, at the same time, for securing the copyright of a ballad version which had not yet been written, just as a modern author reserves the right of dramatising a new novel. If this was not done some rival publisher or bookseller seized the opportunity, produced a ballad on the incident of the moment, and spoilt the sale of the original narrative (ib. ii. 162–3, 261–2). Not only incidents in naval history, but stories and items of news of every kind were treated in the same fashion, and to this practice we owe a number of prosaic ballads on every possible subject. The best of the professional ballad-writers did not limit themselves to the versification of actual events, but went further and embodied in verse their conception of the dangers and pleasures of sailors and of typical incidents of seafaring life. Martin Parker’s Saylors for my Money is a typical example of this, and such compositions form the staple of most collections of naval ballads, probably because their more general character and their greater merit gave them wider popularity and a longer life.

Another class of ballads consists of those written by sailors themselves to describe actions in which they had taken part. A ballad was not a difficult thing to write; the metre was usually simple, the rules about rhyme not exacting, and the traditional formulas and phrases to be employed were familiar. Hence it is not surprising that sailors, and occasionally officers, sometimes undertook to celebrate the exploits of the ships in which they served. Such ballads were produced in considerable frequency in the eighteenth century, and even early in the nineteenth, and some specimens are reprinted in this volume. One written by a seaman on board the Burford, Vernon’s flagship, describes the capture of Portobello; a second, written on board the flagship of Admiral Mathews, relates his battle off Toulon; a third, by a lieutenant of the Bellerophon, celebrates Howe’s victory on the first of June, and is said to have been actually sung in the gun-room of the Bellerophon (pp. 177, 186, 271). In some cases the author reveals himself in the last lines of the ballad.

says the writer of one upon a sloop of that name. Another on the Robin Hood privateer concludes defiantly:

A third, which narrates the escape of the Princess Royal from being wrecked on the Goodwin Sands, ends by suggesting that the poet should be rewarded for his pains:

There are many other ballads in which it is obvious that the writer was personally concerned in the incidents which form the subject of his verses, although no explicit avowal is actually made.

Finally there is yet a third class of ballads, neither written by professional ballad-writers, nor by sailors themselves, but by professional men of letters. The popularity of the ballad induced writers to adopt that form of composition in order to catch the ear of the multitude. Hence a considerable number of satirical compositions cast in that mould, such as the verses against Torrington and Byng, given on pp. 110, 206 of this volume, and other pieces written with a direct political purpose. The typical specimen of this class of ballad is Hosier’s Ghost, by Richard Glover, a professional poet who had already published a blank verse epic, and treated this subject in the fashion most likely to appeal to the multitude in order to secure their support for the attack on Walpole’s foreign policy. Other professional authors, too, without any political object to serve, adopted the same form because they perceived that the sailor was a popular topic, and that his perils, his loves and his diversions, afforded good material for verse, if they were treated on the traditional lines. Dibdin was anticipated by Gay and Stevens, and many others whom the world has forgotten. But whatever popularity they attained in their own day, their productions have no claim to inclusion in these pages, for they merely represent a literary fashion, and are too artificial to possess any value for historical purposes. Moreover the best of them are so well known that it is unnecessary to reprint them, but two or three early examples have been inserted in order to show when this species of naval verse began to appear and how it originated. It has also seemed needful to give incidentally some brief account of the poetical literature which illustrates various periods in the history of the growth of English sea-power.

The earliest celebrations of the exploits of the navy came from the pen of a professional poet, Laurence Minot. His works, first discovered by Thomas Tyrwhitt, were published by Joseph Ritson in 1795 under the title of Poems on Interesting Events in the reign of King Edward III., written in the year 1352 by Laurence Minot. The most accessible edition is that of Mr. Joseph Hall, published by the Clarendon Press in 1887. Of the eleven poems which Minot devotes to the occurrences of King Edward’s reign, two narrate naval victories. The fifth recounts the fight with the French at Sluys on June 24, 1340; the tenth describes the battle known as Les Espagnols sur Mer, which took place off Winchelsea on August 29, 1350. Directly, the historical value of the two poems is small. Indirectly, they are valuable as illustrating the spirit of the time and the methods of naval warfare in the fourteenth century. ‘The battles on the sea,’ writes Froissart, ‘are more dangerous and fiercer than the battles by land: for on the sea there is no recoiling nor fleeing; there is no remedy but to fight and to abide fortune, and every man to show his prowess’ (Chapter L). There was no pity for the defeated, and prisoners were thrown overboard. One ballad exultantly records that ‘the caityffs come out of France were taught to swim,’ the other, that the Spaniards ‘sail in the sea-ground fishes to feed.’ A similar spirit reappears in some of the seventeenth century ballads.

The fifteenth century is represented in this collection by a nautical ballad describing a pilgrimage to St. James at Compostella, which was probably written during the reign of Henry VI. Its interest lies in its description of life on board ship, and in the number of naval terms and phrases it preserves. ‘The song,’ says Sir Cyprian Bridge, ‘is most likely the composition of a sailor on board what was certainly a merchant vessel, and one of its subjects—for it portrays seamen’s life as well—is that which always was, and perhaps is, a matter of unfailing interest and amusement to sailors, viz., the miseries of landsmen afloat in rough weather’ (Stone, p. 196). The period furnished few warlike exploits to celebrate, but a fight off Harfleur in August 1416, in which the Duke of Bedford defeated the Genoese caracks in the service of France, was sufficiently famous to be commemorated at length in Hardyng’s rhymed Chronicle, and to be recorded in the verse tract called the Libel of English Policy. Both passages are reprinted by Sir Harris Nicholas (History of the Royal Navy, ii. 421, 424). The Libel of English Policy, written during the reign of Henry VI., laments the decay of the navy, and the neglect to guard the seas. Hakluyt, who reprinted the poem in his Voyages, described it as ‘exhorting all England to keep the sea, and namely the narrow sea; showing what profit cometh thereof, and also what worship and salvation to England, and to all English men.’ (The Principal Navigations, etc., of the English Nation, vol. ii. p. 114, ed. 1903; the Libel is also reprinted in Thomas Wright’s Political Poems and Songs relating to English History, 1861, ii. 157). It sets forth also the consequences of forgetting to guard the seas, and the damage which English commerce suffered from the pirates who were allowed to prey upon it unchecked. Of these the Bretons, especially the men of St. Malo, and the Flemings were the chief, and two particular pirates, Hankyn Lyons and Pety Pynson, are mentioned by name. Throughout the fifteenth century, and indeed until the close of the sixteenth, the Channel and the British seas in general were infested by pirates. There were Italian pirates as well as Bretons. In a ballad which gives a legendary history of the overthrow of Richard III., a messenger is sent by Lord Stanley to Henry Tudor with money for the intended expedition to England. The great danger the messenger fears is the galleys of the Italian pirates.

(The most pleasant Song of Lady Bessy, edited by J. O. Halliwell, Percy Society, 1847, pp. 27, 64). The popular ballad entitled John Dory, which first appeared in print in 1609, seems to embody some tradition of the fights with Italian pirates, or perhaps of some earlier battle with Italian sailors in French service such as that of 1416. The longer ballad, narrating Sir Edward Howard’s battle with Sir Andrew Barton, printed on pages 6–15, describes an historical event which took place in 1511, and is recorded by John Lesley, Bishop of Ross, in his Chronicle. The details embody popular tradition rather than facts. The version of the ballad printed here is a sixteenth century version preserved in Bishop Percy’s MS. It was partially rewritten and adorned with various rhetorical additions by some seventeenth century writer. This late version, which begins,

is reprinted in Stone’s Sea Songs and Ballads (p. 64), where there may also be found a still later echo of the original ballad, entitled Henry Marten (p. 72).

These few ballads and poems comprise all the verse literature in existence touching the naval history of the period which preceded the accession of Elizabeth. With her reign the literature of the subject at once assumes considerable proportions. Mr. Julian Corbett goes too far when he says ‘It is one of the remarkable features of the Elizabethan age that its higher literature displays hardly a trace of having been influenced by the exploits of the seamen.’ (Drake and the Tudor Navy, ii. 44.) On the contrary Professor Raleigh shows conclusively, in his introduction to the recent reprint of Hakluyt, the extent to which the voyages and discoveries of that time influenced the imagination of contemporary poets. Writers by profession, whether they wrote for a learned audience or the people, began to discover that the character of the great seamen of the time furnished a popular topic for panegyric, and to celebrate their deeds in verse. William Warner inserted in his Albion’s England a spirited description of the fight with the Armada, and a passage in praise of ‘world-admired Drake,’ ‘his brave breeder Hawkins’ and others of less note. It was to be wished, he suggested, that some better poet than himself should write ‘their glorious journeys’ and give them the immortality they deserved, for they would make ‘immortal pen-work.’

Drake had already been the subject of two poems. In 1587 one Thomas Greepe published The true and perfect news of the worthy and valiant Exploits of Sir Francis Drake, which contained, in very halting verse, an account of the taking of Cartagena. In 1596 Charles Fitzgeffrey, poet and divine, published Sir Francis Drake his honourable Life’s Commendation and his tragical Death’s Lamentation. In this elaborate and rhetorical poem ‘that high towering falcon,’ as an Elizabethan critic calls Fitzgeffrey, celebrated not only Drake, but Drake’s predecessors from Cabot to Hawkins. In like manner Gervase Markham devoted a poem of 1,400 lines to The Most Honourable Tragedy of Sir Richard Grinvile, Knight, which appeared in 1595 (reprinted by Dr. E. Arber in 1877 under the title of The Last Fight of the Revenge). There is also extant a poem In Praise of Seafaring Men, in Hope of Good Fortune, which bears the alternative title of Sir Richard Grenfilldes Farewell, referring apparently to Greynvile’s voyage of discovery in 1585. It is reprinted by Halliwell in his Early Naval Ballads (p. 14) and by Stone, Sea Songs (p. 5).

A number of minor poems also deserve mention. There is, for instance, John Kirkham’s Commendation of Martin Frobisher (printed in Halliwell p. 45), another by Thomas Ellis (Ballads from Manuscript, ii. 282), and there are others by Thomas Churchyard (Collier, Extracts from the Registers of the Stationers’ Company, ii. 47, 51). Better known is George Peele’s Farewell to the most famous Generals Sir John Norvis and Sir Francis Drake, Knights, which refers to their expedition to Portugal in 1589 (Peel’s Works, ed. Bullen, ii. 233). One might mention also Donne’s two poems The Storm and The Calm, both expressly said to refer to ‘The Island voyage with the Earl of Essex,’ i.e. the expedition to the Azores in 1597 (Donne’s Works, ed. Grosart, ii. 3–10). Last of all, and best, there is Drayton’s Ode to the Virginia Voyage (Poems, 1627, p. 295).

The surprising thing is not the paucity of literary references to the exploits of the Elizabethan seamen, which were generally, if inadequately, commemorated, but the limited number of songs and ballads on the subject which have reached us. The popular literature of the period was very extensive in amount and very diverse in character. The registers of the Stationers’ Company for the reign of Elizabeth contain very numerous entries of ballads which deal with the incidents of the day or with aspects of the life of the time. Few of them, comparatively, deal with sailors or seafaring matters, and of those many have perished. There was a famous ballad entitled Row well, ye mariners, registered in 1566, which was sufficiently popular to be ‘moralised’ two or three times over—that is, converted into a spiritual song of an allegorical nature (Collier, Extracts from the Registers of the Stationers’ Company, i. 130, 161, 175). The words are lost, though the tune has survived (Old English Popular Music by W. Chappell, ed. 1893, i. 127). Lost, too, are The Sailor’s New Tantara, published in 1584, a ballad In Praise of the Queen’s Ships (beginning ‘O the Elizabeth Jonas’) published in 1586, The Sailor’s Joy, published in 1595, and A true Sailor’s Song against Spanish Pride that appeared in 1590 (Arber, Registers of the Stationers’ Company, iii. 200, 210, 254, 317). Of the ballads which described life at sea several can be traced. One on ‘the perilous pains of poor mariners’ was licensed on October 13, 1579, and another on March 10, 1582, concerning ‘the danger of sailors and their troubles, turmoil, and pain’ (Arber, ii. 164, 187). One of these is perhaps the Ballad of Sea Fardingers Describing Evil Fortune (Halliwell, p. 16; Stone, p. 6; Masefield, p. 145), or possibly that beginning, ‘I rue to see the raging of the seas’ (Halliwell, p. 79; Stone, p. 8; Collier, ii. 159). Fate has happily preserved a single damaged copy of the comedy called Common Conditions, printed probably about 1576, containing a song sung by pirates, which is printed on p. 17 of the present volume.

Amongst the lost ballads are a certain number relating to piracy, and recording the punishment of some Englishmen who practised that trade. On December 19, 1579, there was licensed The Fatal Farewell of Captain Gilbert Horseley, who managed to escape from the Counter, the prison in which he was confined, ‘in a cloakbag,’ but was recaptured and executed. Another, licensed March 16, 1580, was entitled—

A third, published in August 1583, was styled Clinton’s Lamentation and a fourth, in 1586, called The Confession of Nine Rovers (Arber, Stationers’ Registers, ii. 165, 167, 197, 210).

As a substitute for these ballads, however, there has been preserved an elaborate poem purporting to be the confession of Clinton and two others, which is to be found in the Bodleian and Lambeth libraries. It is headed Clinton, Purser and Arnold, to their countrymen, wheresoever. Wherein is described by their own hands their unfeigned penitence for their offences past, their patience in welcoming their death, and their dutiful minds towards her Majesty. Their apology for their acts is that they only attacked foreign ships and ‘never made one English prey.’

Comparatively few of the ballads of the Elizabethan period relate to voyages of discovery; plunder and fighting were more attractive subjects to the audience for which they were intended. There is, however, A Commendation of the adventurous Viage of the worthy Captain M. Thomas Stutely Esquire and others towards the land called Terra Florida, which appeared in 1563 (Collier, Old Ballads from Early Printed Copies, Percy Society, 1840, p. 72). Of another on the same subject, dated two years earlier, made by one beynge greatly impoverished by the viage prepared for Terra Floryday, only a fragment has survived. Thomas Cavendish’s circumnavigation of the world was too remarkable a feat to escape attention, and in November 1583 two ballads upon the subject appeared. One was entitled A ballad of Master Cavendish his voyage, who by travel compassed the globe of the world arriving in England with abundance of treasure; the other Of the famous and honourable coming of Master Cavendish’s ship called the Desire before the Queen’s Majestie and her court at Greenwich the 12 of November 1588 (Arber, Stationers’ Registers, ii. 236). Neither of these is now in existence. By a singular contrast Ralegh, whose explorations and exploits deserved celebration, is only commemorated by the ballad Sir Walter Raleigh Sailing in the Lowlands, a romantic story about a little ship-boy of which several traditional versions exist. To a version of this which was printed in the reign of Charles II., accident, or perhaps the craftiness of the printer, attached the name of Ralegh (Child, English and Scottish Popular Ballads, v. 135, reprinted by Stone, Sea Songs and Ballads, p. 74). In much the same way a ballad, first printed in the eighteenth century, Queen Elizabeth’s Champion or Great Britain’s Glory, commemorates the fact that the second Earl of Essex once commanded Elizabeth’s navy by a fictitious account of the capture of the son of the Emperor of Germany by the third earl (Child, v. 145; Stone, p. 84). Probably the distinction gained by the third earl in the expedition to Cadiz in 1625 originated the ballad.

The best ballad on the defeat of the Spanish Armada is Thomas Deloney’s Joyful New Ballad declaring the happy obtaining of the great Galleazzo, which is printed on p. 18. Deloney also wrote one on, The strange and most cruell Whippes which the Spaniards had prepared to whippe and torment English men and women: which were found and taken at the overthrow of certain of the Spanish Shippes; and another on The Queene’s visiting of the Campe at Tilburie with her entertainment there. Both may be found in The Roxburghe Ballads, vi. 387, 391, but since neither specially relates to the navy it was not thought necessary to reprint them. Mr. Ebsworth, in his introduction to these ballads, has brought together four or five ballads relating to the defeat of the Armada, written in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Roxburghe Ballads, vi. 378–383). Three of them are also to be found in Stone’s Sea Songs and Ballads, pp. 80–83.

The entries in the Stationers’ Registers give the titles of several ballads which no longer survive, viz: The English preparacion of the Spaniards Navigacion; The late wonderful Dystres which the Spanishe Navye sustayned yn the late fighte in the Sea and upon the West Coast of Ireland in this moneth of September 1588; A Ballad of Thanksgiving unto God for his mercy toward hir Majestie; England’s Joy and Delight, In the back Rebound of the Spanyardes Spyght.

There were also ballads on the military preparations and the thanksgivings after the victory which have perished, and a number of ballads relating the exploits of squadrons or single ships, whose titles are entered in the Stationers’ Registers. Under November 14, 1588, appears A Ditty of the Exploit of the Earl of Cumberland on the Sea in October 1588; under August 5, 1590, a Ballad made upon the late Fight at Sea between two Ships of Dunkirk and a small Ship of 80 ton appertaining to the Earl of Cumberland (Arber, ii. 236, 262). In July 1590 there was published A Ditty of the Fight upon the seas the 4 of June last in the Straits of Jubraltare between the George and the Thomas Bonaventure against eight gallies with three Frigates; in May 1591 followed a tract and a ballad on The wonderful Victory obtained by the Centurion of London against five Spanish Gallies, the 4th of April being Easter Day 1591; a year later came The Seamans Carol for the taking of the great Carack, and in July 1600 a ballad relating how certain Merchants ships of England fought five Spanish ships of war in the Straits of Gibraltar on May 25, 1600 (Arber, ii. 262, 274, 293; iii. 62). None of these survive.

About the beginning of the seventeenth century new enemies begin to take the place hitherto occupied by the Spaniards in the ballads. Piracy took a new shape after the close of the war with Spain. Captain John Smith devotes the last chapter of his Travels to ‘The bad life and qualities, and conditions of pirates, and how they taught the Turks and Moors to become men of war.’ Because the peace threw them out of employment, and because ‘they grew hateful to all Christian princes,’ they retired to Barbary, and made its harbours their headquarters. Even before that the Barbary coast was a perilous one for richly laden merchantmen, and armed ships that met a likely prize did not always inquire whether their nations were at war. The ballad entitled The Sailor’s Only Delight tells how two English merchantmen sailed for the coast of Barbary (p. 23). The Sweepstake was taken by a French man-of-war, but her consort the George-Aloe captured the French ship later, and made her crew suffer the fate they had inflicted on the crew of the Sweepstake.

Two centuries before, Chaucer’s shipman, who had no very scrupulous conscience, as Chaucer owns, used to dispose of the crews of the ships he took in the same fashion.

There are other references to this practice in early seventeenth century ballads, but it was now becoming confined to pirates.

Some of the English adventurers who took shelter in the Barbary ports gave up their trade after a time, made their peace, and returned to England: for instance, Sir Henry Mainwaring. Others became renegades and ended their days there. The two most famous were John Ward and a Dutchman called Simon Danzer or Danseker. Two pamphlets on their misdeeds were published in 1609, and also a tragedy by Robert Daborne called A Christian turned Turk in 1612. The ballads upon them which are included in this collection (pp. 25–31) were registered on July 3, 1609. The Famous Sea-Fight between Captain Ward and the Rainbow was written after Ward was dead and his exploits had become legendary, but its popularity requires its insertion.

From Ward, Danseker, and others, the native seamen of the Barbary States learnt much. When they established themselves there, says Captain Smith, ‘the Moors scarce knew how to sail a ship ... those were the first that taught the Moors to be men of war.’ Later still, after the deaths of their leaders, the European pirates in Barbary ‘became so disjointed, disordered, debauched and miserable, that the Turks and Moors began to command them as slaves, and force them to instruct them in their best skill, which many an accursed renegado or Christian turned Turk did, till they have made those Sallee men or Moors of Barbary so powerful as they be to the terror of all the Straits, and many times they take purchase in the main ocean, yea, sometimes even in the narrow seas.’

A modern writer, accepting the view that it was in this way the Barbary captains learned the new art of sailing warships, points out that the expulsion of the Moriscoes from Spain in 1609 led to a further result equally disastrous. ‘It led at once to the rise of Sallee as a pirate port, and its launch upon its sinister career’ (Corbett, England in the Mediterranean i. 10–20). Year after year the losses of the English merchants grew greater, and the number of English captives in Barbary increased. In 1620 James I. sent Sir Robert Mansell’s fleet against them, and in May 1621 Mansell made his abortive attack on Algiers (ib. 110–133). In 1624 there was presented to the House of Lords ‘the humble and lamentable complaint of above 1,500 poor captive souls, now under the miserable oppression of the Turks in Argier, Tunis, Sally and Tituane.’ Parliament ordered a general collection throughout the whole of England for the redemption of the captives, and the King issued letters patent for that purpose. (Lords’ Journals, iii. 411–13; Bewes, Church Briefs, p. 117). The verses entitled, The lamentable cries of at least 1500 Christians, printed on p. 31, were evidently printed and circulated in 1624, when this general collection was made. Beyond raising money in this way for ransoming captives, James did nothing, and nothing was done by Charles till Rainborow was sent to Sallee in 1637. ‘The expedition of 1637, whereby 300 or 400 Englishmen were rescued from slavery, was, in design and execution, the solitary success of Charles’s naval administration’ (Oppenheim, The Administration of the Royal Navy, p. 277). Though a True journal of the Sally Fleet, with the Proceedings of the Voyage, written by John Dunton, mariner, was published in 1637, no ballad writer celebrated the achievement. When the reign of Charles I. began he was at war with Spain, and a ballad entitled The Honour of Bristol, better known as The Angel Gabriel, relates a fight between a Bristol privateer of that name and three Spanish ships (p. 34). The ballad was written by Laurence Price: the precise date of its publication is uncertain (Roxburghe Ballads, vi. 428). Neither Cecil’s expedition to Cadiz, nor Buckingham’s to the Isle of Ré, inspired anything but satires. A short ballad by ‘a gentleman who was present in all that service’ epitomises the history of the Cadiz voyage (ib. vi. 420). References to both may be found in the volume of Poems and Songs relating to George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, edited by Mr. Fairholt for the Percy Society, in 1850. One ironically sets forth the expectations excited when the Lord High Admiral put to sea in 1627:

Buckingham’s part in the reorganisation of the navy was forgotten by satirists, but the king’s panegyrists exaggerated the effort of Charles I. to strengthen the fleet. His attempts to assert the sovereignty of the seas furnished them with a theme. Between 1632 and 1640 Charles built about a dozen new ships, eight of which were a considerable size. The greatest of them was the Sovereign of the Seas, which was over 1,500 tons in size, carried a hundred guns, cost 40,000l. to build and 25,000l. to arm. Mr. Oppenheim describes her as ‘the largest, most ornate and most useless ship afloat,’ but after being cut down by the navy board of the commonwealth she did good service. (Oppenheim, p. 252; Clowes, ii. 6.) Launched in October 1637, she was intended, as her name shows, to assert the sovereignty of the British seas, which since 1634 Charles had been endeavouring to maintain against the French and the Dutch. Selden’s Mare Clausum was published in 1636, to prove his claim; the Earl of Lindsey’s fleet in 1635, and the Earl of Northumberland’s in 1636, were sent forth to enforce it. (Gardiner, History of England, vii. 358, 384; viii. 154.) Lindsey’s fleet consisted of nineteen ships of the royal navy and twenty-six merchant vessels. Northumberland’s contained twenty-seven king’s ships. This display of naval force inspired the poems printed on p. 36, the first a panegyric On His Majesties Fleet, the second an address from Neptune to England, which was probably derived from some masque played at Court during these years. The ballad Upon the Great Ship clearly belongs to 1637 (p. 37). In that year Thomas Heywood published a prose pamphlet entitled A true Description of his Majesties Royal Ship built this year at Woolwich in Kent, upon which these verses seem to be partly based. Heywood also wrote a long poem called An Epigram upon his Majesties Great Ship the Sovereign of the Seas, which is reprinted in Mr. Masefield’s collection (A Sailor’s Garland, p. 94).

A few of the sea songs written during the reign can be traced from the entries in the Stationers’ registers. Ballads were entered On the Kings Navye on June 19, 1625; A narrative of a sea-fight by the Lyon of London against 6 Turkish ships on January 2, 1635; A new relation of 4 Englishmen that brought into Saint Lucar’s Turkish Pirates and their Ship on December 10, 1638; a Ballad of the Seafight with three Turkish piratts on July 13, 1640; A noble and notable Seafight on July 17, 1640. All these have perished. Half a dozen ballads on the sea-fights between the Spaniards and Dutch in the Channel in September 1639, and on the destruction of the Spanish fleet in the Downs by Tromp on October 10, 1639, were published. Of these one survives, in Wood’s collection in the Bodleian, entitled A New Spanish Tragedy or More Strange News from the Seas. In addition there are two amatory ballads, one registered June 13, 1631, called A Sayler new come over; the other, registered on July 18, 1636, A dainty new ditty of the Sayler and his Love, which is possibly the Pleasant new song betwixt the Sayler and his Love reprinted in the Roxburghe Ballads, ii. 470.

Yet the most famous of English naval ballads originated during this period. Martin Parker’s Saylors for my Money is undoubtedly, as Mr. Ebsworth points out, the far back original of Campbell’s Ye Mariners of England (Roxburghe Ballads, vi. 797). It has a rival in The Jovial Mariner or the Seaman’s Renown, by Lawrence Price (ib. vi. 639). Neptune’s Raging Fury or The Gallant Seaman’s Sufferings, which begins ‘You gentlemen of England,’ is an adaptation of Martin Parker’s ballad, written probably towards the end of Charles I.’s reign, or perhaps during the Protectorate (ib. vi. 431). All three are here reprinted (pp. 40–46). The third, Neptune’s Raging Fury, came to be known as The Old Mariners to distinguish it from later adaptations, and an abridged version of it, consisting of the first, the eleventh, and the thirteenth verses, was current in Campbell’s time under the title of The New Mariners. Campbell borrowed from it his refrain, and the phrases, ‘roar on the shore’ and ‘sweep through the deep,’ and honestly entitled the verses he sent to the editor of the Morning Chronicle in 1800, an Alteration of the old ballad ‘Ye Gentlemen of England’ (Beattie, Life of Campbell, i. 341).

During the Commonwealth and the Protectorate the English navy became the most powerful in Europe, and yet the naval victories of those ten years left hardly any trace in ballad literature. One reason for this was the rigid censorship of the press which existed during that period. In 1647 and 1648 a flood of abusive ballads and newspapers had appeared in print, directed against the Long Parliament and the army, and designed to further the cause of the King. The Parliament passed on September 20, 1649, an Act for the suppression of unlicensed books and pamphlets, and for the punishment of their authors and vendors. Hawkers of pamphlets, newspapers and ballads, and ballad-singers, were to be apprehended, conveyed to the House of Correction, and whipped as rogues. By this Act, and by an Act against vagrants passed in 1657, declaring that henceforth, ‘persons commonly called fidlers and minstrels’ should be proceeded against as ‘rogues, vagabonds and sturdy beggars,’ the production and circulation of ballads was effectually checked. Consequently neither the naval commanders of that time nor their victories were commemorated in the usual way. There is indeed a ballad called Admiral Deane’s Funeral describing his interment in Westminster Abbey in 1653 (Rump Songs, 1660, p. 308); but it is merely a Royalist satire, concluding with the statement that though the admiral’s body is solemnly interred ‘In the famous chapel of Henry the Seven,’ yet ‘His soul is scarce gone the right way to heaven.’ But the only ballad directly relating an incident in the wars of this period is one which describes the bombardment of Malaga by five of Blake’s frigates in July 1656, which is reprinted on p. 47. A long narrative poem on The Life and Actions of that valiant Hero Robert Blake, Esq., General of the Fleets of the Commonwealth of England, from the year 1649 to 1657, written during the Protectorate, has survived, but it is too worthless to reprint (Poems on Affairs of State, vol. i. part 2, pp. 274–290, ed.). Of more interest is the Elegy on the Death of the Right Honourable Robert Blake, written immediately after his death by one George Harrison, who appears to have been serving in some capacity in the fleet, since he dates it ‘on board the Dunbar, in the Downs.’ This is given on p. 48.

Poets of greater repute did not neglect the theme which the naval annals of the time afforded. Andrew Marvell, in a satirical poem against the Dutch, entitled The Character of Holland—obviously written about the beginning of 1653, though it was not published till 1665—concludes with some verses on the English navy and its three admirals, Deane, Monck, and Blake. He also wrote a poem on Blake’s victory at Santa Cruz. The address to his captains which he puts in Blake’s mouth breathes at all events Blake’s spirit, although it is fiction:

A greater poet, and more renowned than Marvell, Edmund Waller, celebrated Stayner’s capture of the Spanish galleons off Cadiz in his verses, Of a war with Spain and a Fight at Sea. That poem contains the famous lines,

These lines, inspired by Blake’s long blockade of the Spanish coasts during 1656 and 1657, helped in their turn to inspire a line in Campbell’s Mariners of England. Waller’s Panegyric to my Lord Protector, written in 1655, strikes the same note. ‘The present greatness of this nation’ he attributes in part to the wise head and strong hand of the Protector himself, in part to the ‘winged navy’ which makes the English ‘Lords of the world’s great waste, the ocean.’ This dominion, which Charles I. had claimed, the victories of the Protector’s admirals had re-established, and its outward sign was the honour paid to the red-cross flag.

The pride in the English navy which found its highest expression in these poems of Waller’s was sadly humiliated by the incidents of the second Dutch war. The first of the naval ballads of the new reign is called The Valiant Seaman’s Congratulations to his Sacred Majesty King Charles the Second (p. 53). It is an expression of loyalty and devotion, protesting a willingness to go anywhere and fight anybody in the King’s cause. At the moment it was written, which was probably in 1662, France rather than Holland seemed the most likely adversary, for Louis XIV. was disputing the ceremonial honours due to the British flag. ‘If you will give commission to war with France we’ll go,’ say the seamen to Charles, promising ‘we will make their topsails unto our fleet shall bow.’ A couple of years later it became clear that the Dutch were to be the enemy, not the French. The next ballad in the series is England’s Valour and Holland’s Terror. It refers to Allin’s attack on the Smyrna fleet, which took place on December 19, 1664, and to De Ruyter’s proceedings in Guinea during the same year. ‘We’ll teach you better manners yet than ever did old Noll,’ it threatens. This ballad was probably published about January 1665, before war was actually declared. Much about the same date appeared Dorset’s famous song, To all you ladies now at land. A tradition handed down by Prior represents it as written ‘the night before the engagement with the Dutch in 1665,’ which has been interpreted to mean the night before the battle of June 3. But Pepys tells us that at an entertainment on the night of January 2, 1665, ‘I occasioned much mirth with a ballad I brought with me, made from the seamen at sea, to their ladies in town; saying Sir William Penn, Sir George Ayscue and Sir John Lawson made them’ (Pepys, Diary, ed. Wheatley, iv. 322). There is no reason to doubt that Dorset’s song was the ballad in question.

The naval battles which began in June 1665 and ended in the summer of 1666 are the subject of a series of ballads which have fortunately survived. The battle of June 3, 1665, is celebrated in The Royal Victory (p. 58), while The English Seaman’s Resolution clearly belongs to the spring of 1666, when Monck and Rupert had succeeded the Duke of York and the Earl of Sandwich as commanders (p. 61). England’s Triumph and Holland’s Downfall is a narrative of the four days’ battle of June 1666. The writer has no doubt that it was a great victory, but is obliged to own ‘we can’t afford such brunts as these’ (p. 63). Hence the joy with which men welcomed the undoubted and decisive victory of St. James’s Day, July 25, 1666. On it there are three ballads: The New Ballad of a famous German Prince and a renowned English Duke, England’s Royal Conquest, and Holland turned to Tinder (pp. 66–79). The series closes with The Dutch Damnified, or the Butter-Boxes Bobbed, which narrates the destruction of 160 Dutch merchantmen in their own harbours by Sir Robert Holmes on the eight and ninth of August, 1666 (p. 79).

The same tone of ferocious exultation marks them all; the populace liked to hear that, after one battle, the Dutch vessels ‘looked more like shambles than ships,’ that in another, six thousand Dutchmen were sent to feed their cousins the fish, and that in a third, thanks to the effect of the British fireships, you ‘might have had Dutchmen boiled or roast.’ A Dutch captain might be praised as a gallant fighter, but ‘he that caught fishes now fishes catch him’ was the sort of epitaph which pleased the man in the street. ‘Why should my nature or conscience repine at taking his life that fain would take mine?’ asks one writer. If one motive for the war was hatred for the ‘Butter-boxes’ and the ‘Hogan-Mogans,’ as the sailors call the Dutch, another was the desire for plunder. ‘We mean to have some of your dollars before that our fleets do part’ declares one writer, while a second rejoices over the store of plate taken on board the Dutch merchantmen, which makes the cabins of the English captains look “like goldsmiths” shops.’

On the British reverses the ballads are silent, but the poets of the period fill the gap. They, too, began by celebrating the successes of the British arms. Waller led off with a long poem of a new kind, Instructions to a Painter for the drawing of the posture and progress of his Majesties forces at sea under the command of his Highness-Royal; together with the battle and victory obtained over the Dutch, June 3, 1665 (Works, ed. Drury, p. 176). He described, one after another, ostensibly for the artist’s guidance, the early scenes of the war—the capture of the Dutch Bordeaux fleet, Allin’s attack on their Smyrna fleet, and finally the sea-fight off Harwich. It was to the courage and conduct of the Duke of York that Waller attributed the victory of the English, and accordingly he made James the centre of the battlepiece. Scorning defensive armour, such as most naval commanders wore in those days; James stands on his quarterdeck, exposed to every ball, but protected by some power unseen:

Waller had confined himself to the first year of the war. Dryden undertook to celebrate the second. His Annus Mirabilis is an account of the events of the wonderful year 1666, which appeared early in 1667. ‘I am very much pleased,’ writes Pepys, on February 2, 1667, ‘with reading the poem I brought home with me last night from Westminster Hall, of Dryden’s upon the present war, a very good poem’ (Diary, ed. Wheatley, vi. 156). There were reasons why it should please a man employed in the government of the navy, quite apart from its subject. Waller had treated naval warfare purely as a theme for rhetoric; Dryden attempted to understand it, and to make it intelligible. His description of the Loyal London, the vessel which the City presented to the King, and which Pepys commends as ‘the best ship in the world,’ gives a good picture of a first-rate of the period:

In another passage he contrasts the naval architecture and the naval tactics of the English and the Dutch:

In his desire to be true to the facts, and exact in the details, he did not hesitate to employ technical sea terms which no previous poet had dared to introduce in his verse. See, for instance, his description of the refitting of the English fleet after the four days’ battle:

Two other poets of the day treated the story of the Dutch war, but their verses were written under the influence of the disgrace of 1667, and they wrote satires instead of eulogies. In a series of poems, four in all, generally known as Directions to a Painter, Sir John Denham parodied Waller’s Advice and carried the story down to the end of the war. All are printed in the collection of political satires published in 1703 called Poems on Affairs of State (i. 24–54). When the first part appeared ‘abusing the Duke of York and Lord Sandwich and Penn and everybody, and the King himself, in all the matters of the navy and war,’ Pepys was sorry because his patron Lord Sandwich’s reputation was involved. Later still he thought the verses witty and amusing. When the last part came out with its description of De Ruyter’s attack on the Thames in June 1667, the satire made his heart ache, ‘it being too sharp and so true.’ (Diary, vi. 101; vii. 1, 116). Another satirist, more vigorous and yet bitterer than Denham, told in indignant verse the story of the same disaster. Andrew Marvell, in The last Instructions to a Painter about the Dutch Wars, devoted about three hundred lines to describing the fight in the Medway, the breaking of the chain, the burning of the English ships, and the capture of the Royal Charles. His attack was directed against the Government itself, rather than against the commanders of the navy, and some of his bitterest sarcasms are aimed at the attempt to screen those really responsible for the Chatham disaster, by laying all the blame on the luckless Peter Pett, the commissioner of the navy in charge at Chatham. Marvell’s satire, though probably circulated in manuscript in 1667 or 1668, was too bold to be printed, and was not published till 1689 (Marvell’s Poems, ed. Aitken, ii. 20–52, 127–157). He did not confine himself to satire, and in a separate poem entitled The Loyal Scot he commemorated in glowing lines the heroism of Captain Douglas, an officer stationed on the Royal Oak, who, refusing to leave his post without orders, was burnt with the ship on June 12, 1667 (Poems, ed. Aitken, i. 126, 212).

While the second Dutch war fills so large a place both in poetry and in the ballads, the third, which covers the period from March 1672 to February 1674, was left comparatively unsung. It was not a national war in the same sense that the first and the second had been, but rather the outcome of a diplomatic intrigue, and excited less public interest. It is represented in this collection by two ballads only, one on the battle of Solebay on May 28, 1672, the other on the capture of a Dutch frigate by an English one in 1674 (pp. 82, 83–6). On the other hand, the war produced a small crop of elegies on the officers who fell in different engagements. The fashion began in the first war. There is an elegy on Captain Henry Terne of the Triumph, killed in the four days’ battle in June 1666. Similarly there is an Elegy on that grand Example of Loyalty, Valour, and Conduct, Sir Edward Spragge, unfortunately drowned (after incomparable proof of heroic gallantry) in the late engagement with the Dutch, August 11, 1673. We have also English Iliads, or a Sea-Fight reviewed, in a Poem occasioned by the death of a Person of Honour slain in the late War (Lord Maidstone, killed in the battle of Southwold Bay). Captain Francis Digby, who fell in the same battle, became more famous in ballads. Dryden wrote a song beginning ‘Farewell, fair Armida, my joy and my grief,’ which was meant to represent Digby’s farewell to the Duchess of Richmond, with whom he was passionately in love. This was expanded into a popular ballad entitled Love and Honour (Roxburghe Ballads, vi. 36). Another ballad-writer produced a supplement, The sorrowful Ladies Complaint, relating how a Damosel lamenteth the loss of her Lover, who behaved himself very valiantly in a late engagement at sea, but was unfortunately slain (ib. iv. 397). An abbreviated version of this, entitled The Drowned Lover, was still sung a few years ago (Baring Gould, Songs of the West, 4th edition, p. xxiii).

Usually these elegies are rhetorical exercises of very little interest, but that on The Death of the noble Knight, Sir John Harman, who died October 11, 1673, contains an account of his career which deserves quotation:

Next in importance to the Dutch war was the struggle with the piratical states in the Mediterranean, which still continued. Though it was marked by many brave exploits it left surprisingly little trace in the naval literature of Charles the Second’s time. There were many engagements worthy of record. On December 19–29, 1669, for instance, Captain John Kempthorne in the Mary Rose, a forty-eight-gun ship, beat seven Algerines, and preserved the merchantmen under his charge. Kempthorne was knighted for this service on April 30, 1670. A picture of the fight was engraved by Hollar, which will be found in Ogilby’s Africa, and the incident apparently inspired a ballad too. The picture of the action at Greenwich bears the following inscription:

These lines are almost identical with two lines in Captain Mansfield’s Fight with the Turks at Sea (printed on p. 86). The ballad on Mansfield’s fight is perhaps an eighteenth century version, or imitation, of one on Kempthorne.

Often merchantmen successfully defended themselves. About October 1671, Captain John Baddison, of the Swallow, a merchantman of 180 tons and twenty-six men, fought an Algiers ship of thirty-eight guns and 220 men, and not only repulsed two desperate attacks, but captured four of the Turks who boarded him. A poem entitled An Encomium on that Worthy Exploit of Captain John Baddison was published in 1671. The only copy known is in the possession of Lord Crawford, who has kindly permitted me to extract the following narrative of the engagement:

Prose narratives of this engagement are to be found in the Calendar of Domestic State Papers for 1671 (pp. 536, 554). ‘King Charles in consideration of that stout and memorable action of Captain Baddison ... was pleased to order a gold chain and medal for him’ (The Historian’s Guide, 1688, p. 82). Another merchant captain, Robert Robertson, Charles knighted for fighting an Algerine man-of-war (Le Neve’s Knights, p. 2). More often weakly armed merchantmen were captured in defiance of treaties, as the narratives of captives such as Adam Elliot, taken in 1670, Joseph Pitts in 1678, and Thomas Phelps in 1684, all illustrate. A petition dated between 1671 and 1681 affirmed that since the last peace the Algerines had taken not less than 140 British ships, and had more than 1,500 English slaves, ‘who suffer and undergo most miserable slavery, put to daily extreme and difficult labour, but a poor supply of bread and water for their food, stripped of their clothes and covering, and their lodging on the cold stones and bricks; but what is more, their extreme hard and savage lading them sometimes with great burthens of chains, and shut up in noisome places, commonly adding some hundreds of blows on their bare feet, forcing out the very blood, and sometimes on the back, sometimes on the belly, and sometimes on them all, insomuch that many are long decrepit, some for ever, and some dying under their hands.’

The fate of these captive sailors is illustrated by a ballad published about 1684, called The Algiers Slave’s Releasement, or the Unchangeable Boatswain (p. 88). Such captives were usually redeemed by the contributions of the charitable, under the authority of warrants known as ‘briefs’ licensing collections in churches for the purpose. (W. A. Bewes, Church Briefs, pp. 193–206). Some were ransomed by the king himself, others recovered by treaty or recaptured. Squadrons under Allin, Spragge, Narbrough and other commanders were successively sent to the Mediterranean to coerce the pirate states. The Diary of Henry Teonge, who served as chaplain on various ships engaged in that service from 1675 to 1679, contains some account of Narbrough’s proceedings against Tripoli, and throws a flood of light on the conditions of life in the navy during the reign of Charles II. It was published in 1825. Teonge’s Diary contains a ballad on the destruction of a vessel belonging to Tripoli by the English frigate Assistance in 1675 (p. 63), besides other specimens of his muse, mainly of an amatory nature (pp. 73, 79, 168, 241, 259). Still more curious than Teonge’s Diary is along narrative poem describing a cruise in the Mediterranean, from May 1669 to April 1671, under Sir John Harman. It is called The Straights Voyage or St. David’s Poem, was published in 1671, and was written by John Balthorpe, a clerk on board the St. David, Harman’s flagship. It appears to have escaped altogether the notice of naval historians.

One of the heroes of this war was Captain Thomas Harman, sometimes said to be the son of Sir John, and certainly a kinsman. There is a ballad on his capture of the Dutch frigate Schaherlaes in February 1675 (p. 53), but his career began in the Mediterranean. On May 8, 1671, Sir Edward Spragge’s squadron destroyed seven Algiers men-of-war and their prizes in the harbour of Bugia. The boom which defended the Algerines was cut by three of Spragge’s boats, thus making way for a fireship to enter. Harman seems to have been in command of one of the boats. ‘The Admiral,’ says a contemporary letter, ‘had every man killed and wounded in his boat, save Mr. Harman, who is deservedly commended and is said to have cut the boom in half pistol shot under their biggest castel (where the chains reached not) and heads of their men-of-war’ (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1671, p. 249). Dryden, in some lines addressed in 1677 to Nat Lee on his play of Alexander the Great, refers to these two exploits of Harman’s to prove the proposition that some men’s merits are too pre-eminent for rivalry: for instance, Lee’s as a dramatist or Harman’s as a sailor:

When this was written Harman’s brief but glorious career had just ended. In September 1677, while in command of the Sapphire, 34, he engaged an Algerine ship called the Golden Horse, 46, failed to take her, and was mortally wounded in the fight. Elegiac Verses on the death of Captain Thomas Harman, late commander of his Majesties Frigot the Sapphire, addressed and presented to the Duke of York, are amongst the Luttrell collection in the British Museum. Like a sturdy oak, stricken by thunder, says the poet, Harman’s body fell on the deck, but his soul flew upwards to heaven, and the other dead British heroes helped him in to the mansions of the blest,

Our last ballad of the reign of Charles II. is The Benjamin’s Lamentation. Though no ship of that name can be found in the lists of the navy, it will serve as an example of the class of ballads relating to shipwrecks, and its metrical form is of some interest. Possibly it is an early chanty.

The short reign of James II. affords us only two ballads of interest, both of which come from the collections of Samuel Pepys. One relates the prosperous hunt of William Phipps for the treasure of a Spanish galleon wrecked in the Bahamas (p. 96). He sailed in September 1686 in a King’s ship called the James and Mary, returning in June 1687 with cargo valued at 300,000l. (Luttrell’s Diary, i. 407–8; Hutchison, Massachusetts Bay, i. 397; Ellis, Correspondence, i. 295, 325). James knighted him on June 28, 1687. The second is still more interesting, for it shows that even in time of peace the hostility of the Spaniards to the English in the West Indies was so great that a man of war was treacherously attacked as it lay in a Spanish harbour. The Dartmouth, the vessel in question, was a fifth-rate, carrying twenty-eight guns, and according to a note by Pepys the ballad was composed by Hovenden Walker (subsequently Rear-Admiral of the White) who was then serving on board her (p. 92).

With the reign of William III. there was a great increase in the number of naval ballads published, due to the increased interest which the nation took in maritime affairs.

The war with France was popular both with the navy itself and with the people. ‘Lewis, that Christian Turk,’ was generally hated as a sovereign who designed to ruin all Protestant princes, and sought to ‘lay a heavy yoke’ on the free English nation. This is the argument set forth in The Boatswain’s Call to induce sailors to enter the navy. Impressment was necessary. ‘Some,’ continues the ballad, ‘dread and fear the press as much as dying,

But for the moment popular feeling was in favour of impressment. So at all events the ballad called The Maiden’s Frolic seems to prove, which relates how ‘six lusty lasses pressed fourteen tailors.’ Another ballad, The Undaunted Seaman, describes a sailor resolving to venture his life ‘to subdue the pride of France’ in spite of ‘his love’s sorrowful lamentation.’ A fourth relates a maid’s attempt to buy her lover’s discharge for ten pounds.

Thus the captain answers, and the maid is convinced, and resigns herself to the parting (pp. 97–106).

The first task the navy took part in was the reconquest of Ireland. Unfortunately there seem to be no ballads extant either on the relief of Londonderry or the fight in Bantry Bay. Crofton Croker’s Historical Songs of Ireland, published by the Percy Society in 1841, contains half a dozen ballads on military operations in Ireland under William III., but none on naval. But the Pepysian collection supplies a ballad on the capture of the Pelican frigate in Dublin Bay, under the eyes of ‘Old James and his Teagues,’ by Sir Clowdisley Shovell (see p. 107). This took place in April 1690, and the account of the exploit given is so detailed that it looks as if it were written by some one who served under Shovell (see Luttrell’s Diary, ii. 35). Next month came a rumour that Admiral Henry Killigrew with a squadron in the Mediterranean had beaten the French fleet under Chateau Renault, sinking two ships and taking three (Luttrell’s Diary, ii. 47, 57, 61). The rumour was untrue, for his attempt to bring them to an engagement was unsuccessful (Burchett, Transactions at Sea, pp. 37–43). Nevertheless the fictitious triumph was embodied in a ballad called The Seaman’s Victory (see p. 108). On June 30, 1690, Torrington was worsted by de Tourville at Beachy Head. ‘Both the admirals,’ says Burnet, ‘were equally blamed—ours for not fighting and the French for not pursuing.’ Torrington was sent to the Tower, and accused by the popular voice of want of courage as well as of want of conduct. Of this feeling the ballad called Torringtonia, or a New Copy of Verses on the late Sea Engagement, is the expression (p. 110).

Another incident which occurred in the same month is related in an elegy, In the memory of the truly Loyal and Valiant Captain John George, late Commander of their Majesties Frigate the Rose, being a full and true Relation of a bloody Fight between the said Frigate and a French man-of-war to the eastward of Cape Sables on Saturday the 24th of May, 1690. John George was in charge of a convoy when he sighted the French ship, which was superior in force to his own. The enemy

George was killed by a ball from the Frenchman’s maintop, but David Condon, his lieutenant, carried on the fight (assisted by that ‘gallant spark,’ Captain Ben Clark of Wapping, ‘in the European of London, a mast ship,’ which carried ten guns), and beat off the assailant. When New England rose against the government of Sir Edmund Andros in April 1689, George had been made a prisoner, but was released by order of the King, though much distrusted by the supporters of the revolution. One reason for publishing the relation was that the base Bostonians, ‘cursed sons of Cham,’ said that the captain had betrayed his convoy (see Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1690–1, p. 376; ib. America and West Indies, 1689–92, pp. 66, 121, 269; Charnock, Biographia Navalis, ii. 98, 308).

In 1691 Admiral Russell was in command of the fleet in the Channel, but though he cruised from May to September, achieved nothing (Burchett, pp. 63–91). A satirical ballad, ironically entitled England’s Triumph at Sea, probably by the same author as Torringtonia, hints that ‘the cherry-cheeked Russell’ was very careful not to meet with his foes (p. 112). Two regiments of marines had been raised in April 1690, and served in the fleet, and the first allusion ballads make to this branch of service is contained in the following lines:

In September 1691 Russell’s fleet put into Plymouth in a violent storm, losing two ships, the Coronation, a second-rate, and the Harwich, a third-rate. This disaster is commemorated in England’s Great Loss by a Storm of Wind, which exaggerates, as ballads generally do, and makes him lose nine ships (p. 113).

The failures of 1690 and 1691 enhanced the glory of the victory of La Hogue in 1692. On that battle there are no less than four ballads. One of them, Admiral Russell scowering the French Fleet, long kept its popularity with sailors, and is to be found in most eighteenth-century collections of songs. A pamphleteer, writing in 1757 about the action off Toulon on February 11, 1744, says, ‘I myself heard the song about the battle of La Hogue sung by almost every man on board one ship the day of the battle of Toulon with very good effect, till the infamous behaviour of some in the fleet put an end to their song, and changed their praises of the dead into curses of the living, and, upon inquiry, I had reason to believe it was sung in every ship in the fleet with the same effect’ (Three Letters relating to the Navy, Gibraltar and Port-Mahon, 1757, p. 18). Rear-Admiral Richard Carter, who was killed at La Hogue, is the subject of an elegy preserved in the British Museum. It shows that he was popular with those who served under him:

There was also published in 1692 a Congratulatory Ode to Admiral Russell and the other Sea-Commanders for their late Glorious Victory. It refers in the last verse to the rumours spread against the loyalty of the admirals:

The year after La Hogue was marked by the capture of a large part of the Turkey fleet which Sir George Rooke was convoying. On this event the naval muse is silent. On May 10, 1694, Captain Pickard, in command of two third-rates, the Monmouth and the Resolution, and of the Roebuck fireship, fell in off the French coast with a fleet of fifty-two merchantmen bound for Dunkirk, and destroyed thirty-five (Luttrell, Diary, iii. 312; Burchett, p. 214). This is the subject of a ballad entitled The Valiant Seaman’s Courage (p. 125) More interesting is England’s Glory in the behaviour of brave Killeygrove, which relates the capture of two French ships, the Content, of sixty guns, and the Trident, of fifty-two, off Pantelaria, by a squadron of six ships, under the command of Captain James Killigrew (p. 126). The action took place about January 27, 1695, and Killigrew lost his life early in the engagement (Burchett, p. 266; Charnock, Biographia Navalis, ii. 327).

From July 1694 to the autumn of 1695, Admiral Russell, in command of a combined Dutch and English fleet, dominated the Mediterranean and checked the progress of the French arms in Spain. The significance of his operations is brought out in Mr. Julian Corbett’s England in the Mediterranean (ii. 149–184), and the ballad called The Frighted French, or Russell scouring the Seas, represents the feeling which Tourville’s disinclination to come out of Toulon and risk an engagement produced in England (p. 128, post). ‘The honour of commanding the sea and of shutting the French within their ports,’ says Burnet, ‘gave a great reputation to our affairs.’ The ballad, written early in 1695, refers also to the intended operations on the coast of France. It threatens the French:

‘We had another fleet in our own Channel,’ continues Burnet, ‘that was ordered to bombard the French coast; they did some execution upon St. Malos, and destroyed Grandville that lay not far from it; they also attempted Dunkirk, but failed in the execution; some bombs were thrown into Calais, but without any great effect; so that the French did not suffer so much by the bombardment as was expected: the country indeed was much alarmed by it; they had many troops dispersed all along their coast; so that it put their affairs in great disorder and we were everywhere masters at sea’ (Own Times, iv. 277, ed. 1836).

On the other hand, while the French fleet was confined to its ports, English commerce was poorly protected, and it suffered greatly during this period both from privateers and pirates. The pirate now begins to make a figure in ballad literature. The first quarter of the seventeenth century had been marked by the development of the Barbary corsairs, and its last decade was characterised by the growth of a new form of piracy. It is true the buccaneers whose exploits reached their height when Morgan captured Panama in 1668, were little better than pirates (though some of them had commissions of a sort from the Governor of Jamaica), but they confined their activity to the Spanish Main and the South Sea. The new pirates, however, frequented the eastern even more than the western seas, and avowedly preyed on the commerce of all powers. One of the most famous of these was Captain Avery, upon whom in 1720 Defoe published a pamphlet entitled The King of Pirates; being an account of the famous enterprises of Captain Avery, the mock king of Madagascar. In 1713, under the name of Arviragus, he was made the hero of a play called The Successful Pirate. Earlier still there was published the Life and Adventures of Captain John Avery now in Madagascar, 1709. The ballad gives the pirate’s name as Henry Every, but Avery is the commoner form. In May 1694 an English merchant ship, the Charles the Second, commanded by Captain Gibson, was lying near Corunna. She was a stout vessel and carried forty guns. Avery persuaded the crew to mutiny, set the captain on shore, baptised the ship the Fancy, and sailed for the East Indies. Amongst other prizes he captured on September 28, 1695, a ship called the Gunsway, belonging to the Great Mogul. This led to reprisals, and the seizure of the factories of the English in India. On the application of the East India Company a proclamation was issued on July 18, 1696, declaring Avery and his crew pirates, and offering a reward for their apprehension. Five of the crew were seized on their return to England, tried at the Old Bailey, October 29-November 6, 1696, and duly hanged. Others were arrested later. The commencement of Avery’s career is commemorated in A copy of verses composed by Captain Henry Avery, lately gone to Sea to seek his fortune, and the fate of his followers in Villany Rewarded; or the Pirates’ last Farewell (pp. 131, 133).

Avery’s success fired others to imitate him. Captain William Kidd sailed from Plymouth in May 1696 in command of a privateer called the Adventure galley, equipped by private subscription, but with a commission under the Great Seal to seize pirates. Kidd, however, turned pirate himself, was arrested at Boston in July 1699, transmitted to England for trial, and hanged at Execution Dock on May 23, 1701. Captain Kidd’s Farewell to the Seas was a popular song and set to a popular tune. The whole ballad is only to be found in Lord Crawford’s collection, and to him the Society is indebted for permission to reprint it in this volume (p. 134).

During the last ten years of the seventeenth century pirates made the eastern seas and the coast of Africa as unsafe as the buccaneers had made the western. The ballad entitled The Caesar’s Victory tells how an Indiaman successfully beat off five such adversaries (p. 129). The attack took place near Cape Verd Islands on October 31, 1686. A full account is given in Mayo’s Medals and Decorations of the British Army and Navy, i. 61–6.

In the West Indies European pirates continued to be a danger much longer than in the East, and after the peace of Utrecht there followed a great recrudescence of piracy, which lasted for ten years or more. The exploits of these pirates are recorded, with a large mixture of fiction, in Charles Johnson’s General History of the Pirates, published in 1724. On September 5, 1717, George I. issued a general proclamation for the suppressing of pirates, offering a pardon to all who surrendered before September 5, 1718 (Johnson, p. 33). One of the most notorious, Edward Teach, alias Blackbeard, was killed by Lieutenant Robert Maynard of the Pearl, in an action in James River in Virginia on November 22, 1718. A ballad called The Downfall of Piracy celebrated Maynard’s exploit, and forms a fitting close to the series illustrating this portion of our naval annals (p. 166).

To return to the reign of William III. During the later years of the war with France the development of privateering was more dangerous to English trade than the growth of piracy. From the very beginning of the war English commerce had suffered greatly. Nearly every year there were loud complaints against the management of the navy, and parliamentary debates ‘on the miscarriages at sea.’ ‘By an odd reverse of things,’ writes Burnet, speaking of the year 1692, ‘as we made no considerable losses when the French were masters of our seas two years before, so now when we triumphed in that element, our merchants suffered the most.’ The same thing happened in 1695 (Burnet, Own Times, iv. 169, 268). Much was attributed to the mismanagement of the admiralty, and as much to the incapacity of some of the commanders. The old controversy as to the relative merits of ‘tarpaulins’ and gentlemen captains revived once more. That question is the main subject discussed in the tract called A Rough Draught of a New Model at Sea, written by Lord Halifax, probably about 1694 (Foxcroft, Life of Halifax, ii. 454). It is also the subject of A Satire on the Sea Officers, apparently written about the end of 1690, from its references to the battle of Beachy Head (p. 137). The author’s conclusion is that tarpaulins should rule at sea. He refers also to the desire of captains to line their pockets by carrying plate for merchants instead of fighting, and he might also have mentioned the habit of exacting money from merchants for convoys, an act for which in 1689 the House of Commons committed Captain Churchill to the Tower.

As the war went on there were loud complaints of corruption in the victualling and shipbuilding departments, and the grievances of the seamen were set forth in pamphlets by Robert Crosfield, William Hodges, George St. Lo and other writers. Hodges published in 1695 Great Britain’s Groans: or an account of the oppression, ruin, and destruction of the loyal Seamen of England, in the fatal loss of their pay, health, and lives, and dreadful ruin of their families. One grievance was impressment, a greater that men, once pressed, were kept at sea continuously, and not allowed any interval of liberty between their cruises. But their greatest grievances related to their pay: their wages were too long delayed; they were transferred from ship to ship without being paid; they were obliged to sell the certificates for their wages at half-price to ticket-buyers, and so on. Besides this, they were badly fed and harshly treated. In the good old days, said a pamphleteer, ‘they were not poisoned by bad provisions, pease bread, and stinking beef and pork.’ Moreover, ‘such men as General Blake, the Earl of Sandwich, Dean, Lawson, Bourne, Minns, etc. were familiar with their sailors, and instead of calling them damned dogs or sons of whores, called them brethren’ (Remarks upon the Navy. In a Letter from a Sailor to a Member of the House of Commons, 1700, part ii. p. 14). These grievances found expression in a ballad called The Sea Martyrs, or the Seamen’s Sad Lamentation of their faithful service, bad pay, and cruel usage, which the vigilant Pepys preserved, but forgot to date (see p. 140). The sailors punished were evidently regarded as popular heroes, and the ballad is a parallel to those written later on the mutiny of 1797.

A grievance still more often mentioned was that the food was defective both in quality and quantity. Balthorpe’s verse narrative of his cruise in the Mediterranean in 1669–1671 is full of complaints. Within a month after leaving England the crew of the St. David were put upon short allowance.

The wine which the sailors could cheaply procure in the Mediterranean ports compensated for the scantiness of the food:

On the coast of Portugal and in the Mediterranean a mixture of wine and water was served out instead of beer. It was commonly spoken of as ‘beverage.’

Balthorpe drew up a verse petition to Sir John Harman on September 4, 1670, denouncing the malpractices of the purser and the victuallers, which is dated ‘written on Ban Yan Saturday, being Kettle Holyday.’ As usual, the complaint made was not against the regulations, but against the officials:

No petition or promise of redress produced more than a temporary amendment. Resignation and an occasional drinking bout was the only course.

The same complaint recurs in the eighteenth century, and is set forth at length in the True Character of the Purser of a Ship (p. 233).

Yet the sailor of the seventeenth century, badly fed, badly paid and badly treated, was a cheerful person and pleased with small things. Whitelocke, in his relation of his embassy to Sweden in 1653, describes his life on board ship. The ambassador was affable, and gained the love of all the ship’s company. He ‘got into the favour of the officers and mariners by his kindness and familiarity, by being much on the decks and drolling with them and discoursing, especially by affording them now and then a douse in the neck or a kick in jest, seeing them play, and then giving them some of his own tobacco, wine, and strong waters, as there was occasion, which demeanours please those kind of people’ (Journal, i. 135). As he amused them, so they in return amused him. On his return, when he was wind-bound off the mouth of the Elbe, ‘the mariners, in their usual way of sporting, endeavoured to make him some pastime to divert the tediousness of his stay and of the bad weather’ (Journal, ii. 389).

Of what nature the pastime was we can infer from a few notices. Pepys mentions in the journal of his voyage to Tangiers, under August 27, 1683; ‘Till midnight on the quarter deck, seeing the seamen dance to the harp and sing’ (Correspondence, i. 343). And again on September 3: ‘This evening much mirth among the seamen dancing, the sea running high’ (ib. i. 346). There was music of some kind on board most men-of-war. In the Bristol, during Teonge’s voyage to the Mediterranean in 1675, the only instruments mentioned are trumpets. When the ship left the Downs ‘our trumpets sound “Maids, where are your hearts?”’ and again as a compliment to the English consul at Scanderoon the trumpets played the same tune. In describing the celebration of Christmas Day music is mentioned again. ‘At four in the morning our trumpeters all doe flatt their trumpetts, and begin at our Captain’s cabin, and thence to all the officers’ and gentlemen’s cabins; playing a levite at each cabine doore, and bidding good morrow wishing a Merry Christmas. After they goe to their station, viz. on the poope, and sound three levitts in honour of the morning’ (Diary of Henry Teonge, 1825, pp. 12, 91, 117). Balthorpe’s ship, the St. David, only had a fiddler. On Christmas Day,

Before the voyage began, as the ship lay in Portsmouth Road,

Dr. John Covel gives a still more detailed account of the diversions of the sailors. ‘If the weather be fair and permit it we seldome fail of some merry fellows in every ship’s crew who will entertain us with several diversions, as divers sorts of odde sports and gambols; sometimes with their homely drolls and farses, which in their corrupt language they name interlutes, sometimes they dance about the mainmast instead of a maypole, and they have variety of forecastle songs, ridiculous enough’ (September 1670. Diary of Dr. John Covel, p. 104, Hakluyt Society, 1893).

A play written in 1681 represents a captain on shore who makes a companion sing one of these songs. Captain Porpuss is described as ‘a blunt tarpaulin captain.’ When a song is proposed in the drawing-room where he happens to be, he demands a song with some sense in it—not a whining thing about Phillis or Chloris—such a song as he used to hear in the happy days when he was Captain of the Success.

‘Well, she was riding at Sole Bay; ’twas just before the fight (wherein I did such notable service); I had then a lieutenant aboard—a little dapper fellow, but as stout as Hercules; and when we met a-nights in the great cabin, over a jolly bowl of punch, the rogue would sing us the best sea-songs, and so roar ’em out! I think I’ve a fellow can remember one of them. Sing, Sirrah!

There now, there’s life, there’s soul, there’s sense. As I’m a living man, gentlemen, the rogue has foxed me three times, one after another, only by singing this song.’

(D’Urfey, Sir Barnaby Whigg, 1681, Act i. scene i. See also Pills to Purge Melancholy, vol. i. ed. 1719, p. 96.)

This song, which was written by D’Urfey himself, was set to music by Purcell, and may be found in his Orpheus Britannicus. The same collection also contains Purcell’s song of Britons, strike home, from the opera of Bonduca, 1695, which is founded on Fletcher’s play of the same name. It was an adjuration to the ancient Britons to avenge the wrongs which their country and Queen had suffered from the Romans, but seems to have been adopted in the navy as a suitable battle-song. An eighteenth-century pamphlet, describing an action between an English privateer and a French ship, relates the following incident:—‘The master-at-arms had one of his arms and part of his body torn away: in this bloody condition he was carried down to the surgeon, who saying it was impossible to save his life, and the poor man finding himself dying, bravely in his last moments sung the song of “Britons, strike home,” and expired with the words in his mouth’ (A faithful Narrative of the cruel Sufferings of Captain Death and his crew, by Samuel Stoakes, 1757 [?], p. 6).

Songs imported from plays or operas were not likely to become popular on board ship until after they had obtained general popularity on shore. One of the characteristics of the ballad literature of the last quarter of the seventeenth century is the great increase in the number of ballads describing the lives, adventures, loves, marriages, meetings and partings of sailors. Most of them were written for consumption on shore, but some doubtless became popular at sea. The printed collection of ballads contain many specimens. In the Bagford Ballads there are reprints of The Mariner’s Misfortune, a tale of a shipwrecked sailor and a maiden who for his sake went to sea in disguise; The Seaman’s Adieu to his pretty Betty, and The Fair Maid’s Choice, which is ‘Of all sorts of tradesmen a seaman for me’ (Bagford Ballads, i. 247, 274, 289). In the Roxburghe Ballads there are several groups of ballads of the same nature. The sixth volume contains, The Gallant Seaman’s Return from the Indies; The West Country Nymph; The Fair and Loyal Maid of Bristow; and The Seaman’s Sorrowful Bride (pp. 415, 441, 443, 444). The seventh includes a still larger number: The Mariner’s Delight, or the Seaman’s seven Wives; Faithful Jemmy and constant Susan; The Gallant Seaman’s Resolution (whose full intent was to try his fortune at sea, and at his return marry his landlady); Love and Loyalty; The two Loyal Lovers; A Farewell to Gravesend; The Valiant Seaman’s happy Return to his Love; The Seaman’s Advice to his pretty Betty, living near Wapping; The Sailor’s Departure from his dearest Love; The Constant Maiden’s Resolution; Loyal Constancy, or the Seaman’s Love-Letter; Virtue the Reward of Constancy; The Faithful Lover’s Farewell; The Valiant Virgin, or Philip and Mary; The Seaman’s Dolefull Farewell; The Seaman’s Folly, in marrying one so quickly for what he has cause to repent at leisure; The Seaman’s Renown in Winning his Fair Lady (pp. 490–559). The eighth volume gives us: The Seaman’s Frolic, or a Cooler for the Captain; The Seaman’s Complaint for his unkind Mistress of Wapping; The Love-sick Maid of Wapping; I father a Child that’s None of my own, being the Seaman’s Complaint, &c.; A Mad Marriage, or the Female Fancy of Deptford (xciii. 433–443). There are also three verses of A Kiss of a Seaman is worth two of Another (ib. pp. 678, 861).

It was obviously impossible to select more than a few specimens of this class of ballads, and it seemed best to choose three or four which for various reasons were of more historical interest than the rest (see pp. 99, 101, 146), and to add two from the Pepys and Druce collections not previously reprinted (pp. 143, 145). The existence of so many ballads of this kind—and there are many more of them in the Pepysian collection, besides others in Lord Crawford’s possession—proves beyond a doubt the growth of popular interest in the navy. Another proof is furnished by the fact that contemporary dramatists represented sailors in their plays with increasing frequency. Shakespeare was one of the first to do this. Everyone will remember the shipwreck scene with which The Tempest opens, and the song of Stephano: