PUBLICATIONS
OF THE
NAVY RECORDS SOCIETY
VOL. XXXIII.
NAVAL SONGS AND BALLADS
_This volume--NAVAL SONGS AND BALLADS, announced for last year, has
been unavoidably delayed, but is now issued on the 1907 subscription._
_It is hoped that the VIEWS OF THE BATTLES OF THE THIRD DUTCH WAR, also
due on the 1907 subscription, will be ready in May next._
_March 1908._
Naval Songs and Ballads
SELECTED AND EDITED BY
C. H. FIRTH, M.A.
REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY, OXFORD
[Illustration: Publisher’s Colophon]
PRINTED FOR THE NAVY RECORDS SOCIETY
MDCCCCVIII
THE COUNCIL
OF THE
NAVY RECORDS SOCIETY
1907-1908
PATRON
H.R.H. THE PRINCE OF WALES, K.G., K.T., K.P.
PRESIDENT
EARL SPENCER, K.G.
VICE-PRESIDENTS
BRIDGE, ADMIRAL SIR CYPRIAN, A. G., G.C.B.
CLARKE, COL. SIR GEORGE S., G.C.M.G., F.R.S
DESART, THE EARL OF, K.C.B.
FIRTH, PROFESSOR C. H., LL.D.
COUNCILLORS
ATKINSON, C. T.
CORBETT, JULIAN S.
DARTMOUTH, THE EARL OF.
FANSHAWE, ADMIRAL SIR ARTHUR, K.C.B.
FIELD, CAPTAIN A. M., R.N., F.R.S.
GEARY, LIEUT.-GENERAL SIR HENRY, K.C.B.
GINSBURG, B. W., LL.D.
GODLEY, SIR ARTHUR, K.C.B.
GORDON, THE HON. GEORGE.
GRAY, ALBERT, K.C.
HORDERN, LIEUTENANT LIONEL, R.N.
LORAINE, REAR-ADMIRAL SIR LAMBTON, BART.
MARKHAM, ADMIRAL SIR ALBERT H., K.C.B.
MAY, VICE-ADMIRAL SIR WILLIAM, K.C.B.
MOWATT, SIR FRANCIS, G.C.B.
NEWBOLT, HENRY.
PROTHERO, G. W., Litt.D., LL.D.
SEYMOUR, ADMIRAL OF THE
FLEET SIR EDWARD H., G.C.B.
TARLETON, LIEUTENANT A. H., R.N., M.V.O.
THURSFIELD, J. R.
WATTS, SIR PHILIP, D.Sc., K.C.B., F.R.S.
WHITE, COMMANDER J. BELL, R.N.R.
WHITE, SIR WILLIAM H., D.Sc., K.C.B., F.R.S.
YORKE, SIR HENRY, K.C.B.
SECRETARY
SIR J. KNOX LAUGHTON, D.Litt., King’s College, London, W.C.
TREASURER
W. GRAHAM GREENE, C.B., Admiralty, S.W.
The COUNCIL of the NAVY RECORDS SOCIETY wish it to be distinctly
understood that they are not answerable for any opinions or
observations that may appear in the Society’s publications. For these
the responsibility rests entirely with the Editors of the several works.
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.
‘I am a saucy foremast Jack, and to the _Arrow_ do belong,’
says the writer of one upon a sloop of that name. Another on the Robin
Hood privateer concludes defiantly:
‘My name is George Cook, the author of this,
And he may be hang’d that will take it amiss.’
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:
‘It was a brisk young sailor that these lines did make,
And over a can of flip his heart would never ache.’
(Pp. 290, 267, 191.)
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.
‘They will me rob, they will me drown,
They will take the gold from me.’
(_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,
‘When Flora with her fragrant flowers
Bedeckt the earth so trim and gay,’
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 Passport for Pirates wherein they may mark
And shun their abuse by the death of Tom Clarke.’
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.
‘We laid them aboard on the starboard side
And threw them into the sea so wide.’
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.
‘If that he fought and hadde the heigher hand
By water he sent hem hoom to every land.’
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:
‘He’ll cool France and Spain, and quiet the main,
The Dunkirkers passage he’ll stop;
To stay all commotion he’ll plough up the ocean:
God send him a good harvest crop ...
And then he will meet with the West India fleet,
And of them will take fast hold,
And bring them away for England a prey,
And choke us with silver and gold.’
(Fairholt, p. 13.)
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 40,000_l._ to build
and 25,000_l._ 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:
‘Of speedy victory let no man doubt,
Our worst work’s past, now we have found them out.
Behold their navy does at anchor lie,
And they are ours, for now they cannot fly.’
(Marvell’s _Works_, ed. Aitken, i. 119; ii. 14.)
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,
‘Others may use the ocean as their road,
Only the English make it their abode,
Our oaks secure, as if they there took root,
We tread on billows with a steady foot.’
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 sea’s our own! and _now_ all nations greet
With bending sails, each vessel of our fleet.
Your power extends as far as winds can blow
Or swelling sails upon the globe may go.’
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:
‘Fierce, goodly young! Mars he resembles when
Heaven sends him down to scourge perfidious men.’
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:
‘With roomy decks, her guns of mighty strength,
Whose low-laid mouths each mounting billow laves;
Deep in her draught and warlike in her length,
She seems a sea-wasp flying on the waves.’
In another passage he contrasts the naval architecture and the naval
tactics of the English and the Dutch:
‘On high-raised decks the haughty Belgians ride,
Beneath whose shade our humble frigates go;
Such port the elephant bears, and so defied
By the rhinoceros, her unequal foe.
‘And as the build, so different is the fight;
Their mounting shot is on our sails designed:
Deep in their hulls our deadly bullets light,
And through the yielding planks a passage find.’
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:
‘... some pick out bullets from the side,
Some drive old oakum through each seam and rift;
Their left hand does the caulking iron guide,
The rattling mallet with the right they lift.