When Keppel first put to sea on June 12, 1778, the public voice
confidently predicted his success, as _Admiral Keppel Triumphant_ shows
(p. 252). On July 27 he engaged the French fleet under d’Orvilliers off
Ushant. Two songs give an account of this indecisive engagement, one
of which accounts for its indecisiveness by asserting that Keppel had
secret orders not to fight (pp. 253, 255). Then followed recriminations
between Keppel and Vice-admiral Sir Hugh Palliser, ending with the
trial of Keppel by court-martial on the charges of misconduct and
incapacity. On February 11, 1779, he was acquitted, and the charges
were pronounced malicious and unfounded. The popularity of the verdict
is attested by _Keppel Triumphant_ and _Keppel for Ever_ (pp. 255, 257).
In June 1779 Spain declared war, and during August 1779 the combined
French and Spanish fleets dominated the Channel. Paul Jones, who
had already signalised himself in 1778 by attacking Whitehaven and
capturing the British sloop Drake off Carrickfergus, sailed from
L’Orient on August 14, 1779, with a little squadron of four vessels
threatened Leith and Edinburgh, and projected an attack on the shipping
in the Tyne. On September 23 he fell in with a fleet of merchant
shipping coming from the Baltic under the convoy of the Serapis of
forty-four guns and the Countess of Scarborough, a hired vessel armed
with twenty six-pounders. The capture of these two ships by Jones
is celebrated in _Paul Jones the Pirate_. This ballad was evidently
written by an American or someone sympathising with the American cause.
It was often reprinted in England, but the English versions are full of
corruptions and blunders. Nevertheless, by comparison of the various
versions, it has proved possible to obtain a more intelligible text
than that commonly given (p. 259). Several other ballads, including
a Scottish one on the same subject, are reprinted in the _Roxburghe
Ballads_, and with them a political song suggesting that Lord Sandwich
and Lord North were in reality worse enemies to England than Jones
(_Roxburghe Ballads_, viii. 330-35).
As the struggle was for America and the West Indian islands, most
of the fleet engagements of the latter part of the war took place
in American waters. On July 6, 1779, Vice-admiral John Byron, with
Vice-admiral Samuel Barrington as his second in command, fought an
action with the French fleet under D’Estaing off Grenada, and got very
much the worst of the fight. A ballad on the battle, apparently written
by someone on board the Royal Oak, expresses the view generally held
in the fleet, that if Barrington had commanded instead of Byron the
result would have been different (p. 258; cf. Clowes, iii. 434-40;
Mahan, p. 367). _The Bold Blades of Old England_ celebrates the capture
of Omoa in October 1779, and concludes by a reference to Rodney’s
voyage to Gibraltar in December 1779 and his capture of a Spanish
convoy about January 8, 1780 (p. 261; cf. Clowes, iii. 448; iv. 44).
On January 16, 1780, Rodney defeated Langara off Cape St. Vincent,
taking six Spanish ships of the line. Another, the Santo Domingo, was
blown up Prince William was serving at the time on board the Prince
George, the flagship of Rear-admiral Robert Digby, which formed part of
Rodney’s fleet. Reports of the courage and good conduct of the Prince
during the battle increased the popular enthusiasm which welcomed
Rodney’s victory, and inspired the song entitled _The Royal Sailor_
(p. 262). On April 12, 1782, took place Rodney’s victory over De
Grasse, which brought the naval war to a conclusion. It is the subject
of a singularly ungrammatical ballad called _Rodney’s Glory_, and of
another entitled _Hood’s Conquest over the Count de Grasse_, in which
Rodney’s name is not even mentioned (p. 263). Rodney captured five
line-of-battle ships in the battle. Four of them, with three English
74-gun ships, sailed from Jamaica for England at the end of July 1782,
but all save two were lost on the way. Two of the prizes, the Ville de
Paris and the Glorieux, foundered with all hands; a third, the Hector,
was lost, though 200 of the crew were saved by the privateer Hawke.
One of the English seventy-fours, the Ramillies, became unseaworthy,
lost all her masts, and was abandoned. Another, the Centaur, went down
with all her crew except twelve men on September 23, 1782. The ballad
called _The Loss of the Centaur_ (p. 265) commemorates the escape of
Captain Inglefield and the twelve survivors (Laughton, _Sea Fights and
Adventures_, p. 153; Clowes, iv. 88).
Several ballads of the period relate to engagements between single
ships. _Captain Farmer_ (p. 260) describes the hard-fought encounter
between the Quebec and Surveillante off Ushant on October 6, 1779. The
Quebec took fire and blew up, and Captain George Farmer went down with
his ship.
Others relate to the fortunes of American privateers. On the American
side the laureate of the war was Philip Freneau, whose poems appeared
for the most part in newspapers published in America during the
war. They were collected and published at Philadelphia in 1786,
and republished in England in 1861 by Russell Smith. Many refer to
incidents in the naval war. One is _Captain Jones’s Invitation to
American Backwoodsmen to become Sailors_; another, _On the Memorable
Victory gained by the gallant Captain Paul Jones_, narrates his
capture of the Serapis. There are _Stanzas on the new American frigate
Alliance_; _On the Death of Captain Nicholas Biddle_, commander of
the Randolph, a 32-gun frigate, blown up in action with the British
64-gun ship _Yarmouth_ on March 7, 1778. A third poem, _The British
Prison Ship_, tells of the capture of the American privateer Aurora
by the Iris (once the American frigate Hancock) and the sufferings of
the prisoners on board the hulks Scorpion and Hunter. _The Sailor’s
Invitation_ is an encouragement to ship under Captain Barney on board
the Hyder Ally privateer; another ballad, describes the capture of
the sloop General Monk by the Hyder Ally on April 8, 1782. (Freneau’s
Poems, pp. 144, 146, 164, 183, 235, 239, 241.) Another collection,
_Songs and Ballads of the American Revolution_, edited by Frank Moore,
1856, contains a satirical letter in verse describing the capture of
the South Carolina, a 40-gun frigate, by the British ships Diomede and
Quebec on December 20, 1782 (Clowes, iv. 91).
The major operations of the war of the French Revolution and the
general engagements are illustrated by numerous ballads, though for the
most part of very inferior quality.
‘Now Lord Hood is sailed with his gallant crew,
Bold sailors with ships of the line twenty-two,’
begins _Success to the Grand Fleet, or the Honest Briton’s Prayer_,
announcing Hood’s departure for Toulon in August 1793. But the rest
is too poor to quote. The temper of the moment is illustrated by
some lines from _The Taking of Tobago_ (April 1793), which declares
that ‘for murdering of Louis we will make these rebels rue.’ But for
the most part very little sign of any feeling against the French as
revolutionists appears in popular naval poetry; it is simply the old
national hostility. ‘We’ll make them to knock under as we have done
before,’ says the same ballad.
Howe’s victory on June 1, 1794, is the subject of at least half a dozen
ballads, two of which, with a song written by a lieutenant on board the
Bellerophon, will be found on pp. 268-74.
The battle of St. Vincent on February 14, 1797, is celebrated in _A
new song on the victory over the Spanish Fleet by Admiral Jervis_, and
in _Jervis taking the Spanish Fleet_. According to the author of the
first, the tactics of the British ships were simple:
‘They, not heedful of orders, in courage confide;
The best line of battle’s a thundering broadside.’
The second thus sums up the result:
‘Here’s a health to Admiral Jervis, our officers and crew;
Spain with your surprising force we’ve made you for to rue.
Two of your hundred and twenties and two of eighty-four
By Britons brave were soon conveyed safe to old England’s shore.’
Neither deserves reprinting. Duncan was more fortunate than Jervis,
and at least four ballads on Camperdown have survived. One by J.
Pratt will be found on p. 283. Another by J. More, of the Royal Ayr
Volunteers, to be sung to the tune of _The Garb of Old Gaul_, is
printed in Ashton’s _Real Sailor Songs_ (p. 9). In one of the ballads
Duncan’s religion is commended:
‘No power the pride of conquest has his heart to lead astray:
He summoned his triumphant crew, and then was heard to say,
“Let every man now bend his knee, and here in solemn prayer
Give thanks to God, who in this fight has made our cause His care.”’
(_The Fight off Camperdown._)
In the fourth a subscription for the widows of those who fell in the
battle is advocated:
‘Fighting their country’s noble cause they near the Texel fell,
No mutiny, but gloriously they died behaving well.’
(_The Widow’s Lamentation._)
On the battle of the Nile the two most popular ballads--to judge from
the frequency of the reprints--were _The Mouth of the Nile_ and _Battle
of the Nile_. The former begins:
‘It was in the forenoon of the first day of August,
One thousand seven hundred and ninety eight.
After a long pursuit we o’ertook the Toulon fleet,
And soon we let them know we came for to fight.’
The whole is reprinted in Ashton’s _Real Sailor Songs_. The other poem,
more pretentious in style concludes with a sort of apotheosis:
‘In council above rose the deity of war,
Determined to give valour due renown,
And soon on the brow of each hardy British tar
Was placed a resplendent royal crown.
‘While the loud trump of fame on earth and ocean sounded
With Howe, Jervis, Duncan, and Nelson’s name resounded;
But the battle of the Nile was the foremost on the file,
And all the Angel choirs sang the glories of that day.’
Of much greater interest than these is a long narrative ballad, said
to have comprised about sixty verses, of which tradition has preserved
merely a fragment. From the exactness of the details, it was probably
written by some sailor in the fleet. All that survives is printed on p.
287.
The battle of Copenhagen is the theme of two ballads of the ordinary
type (pp. 295, 296). To these has been added the original version of
Campbell’s _Battle of the Baltic_, which he enclosed in a letter to
Sir Walter Scott written on March 27, 1805 (p. 290). ‘Though wanting,’
says Sir J. K. Laughton, ‘the polish which afterwards brought it to
something like perfection, though many of the lines are bald, harsh,
or tumid, some of the expressions are happier than in the finished
work; and, though we do not go to a ballad for historical detail, it
is fuller and more accurate’ (_The Nelson Memorial_, p. 196). Campbell
was in a special sense the laureate of the war which resulted from the
coalition known as the Armed Neutrality of 1801, and he published in
the _Morning Chronicle_ of March 18, 1801, his ballad _Ye Mariners of
England_ headed _On the Prospect of a Russian War_. The original of
this, which differs only in a few unimportant phrases from the later
version, is to be found in Laughton’s _Nelson Memorial_, p. 175, and in
Beattie’s _Life of Campbell_. It is needless to reprint it here.
Nelson’s next engagement was not against the Russians, as he expected,
but against the French flotilla which lay in the harbour of Boulogne
prepared for the invasion of England. This disastrous attempt was
made on August 15, 1801, and is the subject of _A New Song composed by
the wounded Tars_ (p. 297). It was evidently meant to appeal to the
charitable, and the lines:
‘All you that relieve us the Lord will you bless
For relieving poor sailors in times of distress’
are a too familiar ballad formula. There are many other ballads of the
period ending with similar appeals. Two examples will suffice:
‘A splinter knocked my nose off, “My bowsprit’s gone!” I cries,
“Yet well it kept their blows off, thank God ’twas not my eyes.”
Scarce with these words I’d outed, glad for my eyes and limbs,
A splinter burst and douted both my two precious glims.
I’m blind and I’m a cripple, yet cheerful would I sing
Were my disasters triple, ’cause why? ’twas for my king.’
(_The Blind Sailor._)
‘A splinter from our ship was forced,
Which took my arm, to my sad loss,
And now I’m found to wander up and down,
Seeking relief where it can be found.
We all are seamen to our right,
And on the seas we took delight,
But by hard fortune you plainly see
We lost our limbs on the raging sea.
All you who extend your charity,
The Lord preserve your family.’
(_The Seaflower._)
The last action of importance before the peace of Amiens was that
between Linois and Sir James Saumarez in the Straits of Gibraltar on
July 12, 1801 (Clowes, iv. 466). The ballad on it is a parody of the
despatch in which Linois is said to have represented his escape as a
victory (p. 298).
One feature in this war was the attempted invasion of Ireland by the
French. A fleet appeared in Bantry Bay under Admiral Morard de Galle
in December 1796; a landing was actually effected at Killala on August
22, 1798, by General Humbert; a squadron under Commodore Bompart was
engaged by Sir John Borlase Warren on October 12, 1798. A number of
ballads relating to these incidents are collected in Crofton Croker’s
_Popular Songs Illustrative of French Invasions of Ireland_, parts
iii., iv., published by the Percy Society in 1847, but they are too
entirely political in their character. The best is one beginning:
‘Now fair and strong the south-east blew, and high the billows rose,
The French fleet bounded o’er the main freighted with Erin’s foes.
Oh, where was Hood and where was Howe, and where Cornwallis then,
Where Colpoys, Bridport, or Pellew, and all their gallant men?’
The question asked in these lines formed the basis of a motion made
subsequently in Parliament. The author of the ballad answers:
‘Nor skill nor courage aught avail against heaven’s high decrees:
The storm arose and closed our ports, a mist o’erspread the seas.’
Captain Mahan, however, points out that the inefficiency of the
British dispositions against invasion was to blame (_Influence of
Sea-power upon the French Revolution and Empire_, i. 360). The fleet
which reached Bantry escaped with impunity excepting the Droits
de l’Homme, seventy-four, which fell in with Sir Edward Pellew, in
the Indefatigable, forty-four, and Captain Reynolds in the Amazon,
thirty-six, was badly mauled, and wrecked with all her crew on the
coast of France. This engagement, which took place on January 13, 1798,
is celebrated in _The Amazon Frigate_ (p. 276). An earlier exploit
of Pellew’s, the capture of the Cleopâtre on June 18, 1793, is also
the subject of a ballad (p. 267). The fight between the Pique and the
Blanche on June 4, 1795, and that between the Mars and the Hercule, on
April 21, 1798, and an action fought by the sloop Arrow in September
1799, are commemorated in the same way (pp. 285, 289).
In the civil history of the navy the great event was the mutiny of
1797, illustrated here by five ballads. _The New Song_ about ‘the
seventeen bright stars’ gives a sailor’s history of the origin and
progress of the mutiny of the fleet at Spithead, and was evidently
written about the end of May (p. 277). _British Tars Rewarded_
expresses the satisfaction of the fleet at the concessions obtained
from the Government, and _The Genius of Britain_ shows the sympathy
with which the movement was regarded by the Radical politicians of
the time (pp. 279, 280). The more dangerous mutiny of the ships at
the Nore, which began on May 20 and lasted till about the middle of
June, is represented by _A New Song on Parker the Delegate_ and _The
Death of Parker_ (pp. 281, 282). The latter is one of the commonest of
all ballads relating to the navy, and the frequency with which it was
reprinted seems to show that popular feeling was inclined to regard
Parker as a hero and a martyr.
The period from the renewal of the war with France in May 1803 to
the general peace in 1815 supplies few ballads of any merit, and
the more important the event celebrated the worse, as a rule, is the
ballad. Trafalgar produced at least a dozen, of which two are selected
here--_Nelson’s Glorious Victory at Trafalgar_, and another, entitled
_The Death of Nelson_, which begins:
‘Come all you gallant seamen that unites a meeting.’
(pp. 301, 302). A third, beginning _Arise, ye sons of Britain, in
chorus join and sing_, which usually bears the title of _Nelson’s Death
and Victory_, is reprinted by Mr. Masefield (p. 131), and by Mr. Ashton
(p. 18), under the title of _The Battle of Trafalgar_. Mr. Ashton also
prints a fourth entitled _Nelson and Collingwood_ (p. 19). There is yet
another _Battle of Trafalgar_, which begins well:
‘Come all you British heroes, come listen to my song,
It is of a noble battle by our brave seamen won;
The 20th of October that was the very day
The combined fleet from Cadiz, my boys, did put to sea;
The _Euryalus_ made the signal, the _Defence_ she did repeat,
The _Mars_ and the _Colossus_ conveyed it to our fleet.
‘It was off Cape St. Mary, nine leagues from the shore,
When the signal they saw down from Cadiz they bore.
On Sunday the twentieth so early in the morn
We espied our enemy, my boys, four leagues astern;
The day it being foggy we lost them all again,
But on the twenty-first, my boys, we met them on the main.’
The rest of the narrative, however, is a mere catalogue of the names of
ships.
_The Death of Nelson_, better known as _’Twas in Trafalgar’s Bay_, is
from John Braham’s opera entitled _The Americans_, which was produced
at the Lyceum on April 27, 1811. In Bell and Daldy’s _Sea Songs and
Ballads_, 1863 (p. 263), the words are attributed to Samuel James
Arnold. There is another _Death of Nelson_--a rough and ungrammatical
popular ballad--which seems to deserve reprinting in spite of its
defects, as a testimony to popular feeling in England (p. 302).
Sir Richard Strachan’s victory on November 4, 1805 (Clowes, v. 171), is
the next important event celebrated, and it is treated as completing
Nelson’s work (p. 304). Clowes describes it as ‘a creditable pendant to
Trafalgar’ (_The Royal Navy_, v. 174). Cochrane’s attempt to destroy
the French fleet in the Basque Roads in April 1810 was also made the
subject of a song. ‘Cochrane undaunted’ has his due praise; Gambier
is not mentioned either for good or evil. The rest of the incidents
recorded are cutting out affairs or frigate fights. Yeo’s exploits
on the coast of Spain in 1805, and the capture of the Thetis by the
Amethyst in November 1808, were both held worthy of recognition in
verse (pp. 300, 305; cf. Clowes, v. 362, 427).
In June 1812 the field of the war was widened by President Madison’s
declaration of war against England. This provides us with some ballads
which give the point of view of England’s opponents, and advantageously
supplement the productions of our own soil. A ballad beginning ‘Ye
Parliament of England’ states the case of the United States against
Great Britain, and summarises the naval history of the war for American
hearers (p. 308). ‘It was still,’ says an American, ‘a favourite song
in many parts of the country as late as 1859, and it is valuable as a
reflection of the spirit in which the war of 1812-14 was regarded by
those who fought in it’ (G. C. Eggleston, _American War Ballads_, 1889,
i. 131). The capture of the Guerrière by the Constitution on August
19, 1812, was the subject of an American song subsequently reprinted
as a broadside in London (p. 309). The capture of the Chesapeake by
the Shannon in June 1, 1813, was the subject of three English ballads,
two of which are here reprinted (p. 311). The metre of the best known
is the same as that of the song on the Constitution and Guerrière, and
one was evidently intended as an answer to the other, though it appears
uncertain which was published first. The last of the series narrates
the capture of the President on January 15, 1815, and is called _The
Endymion’s Triumph_. It just mentions the existence of the rest of the
squadron, but does not attribute any part in the result of the fight to
the Pomone or the Tenedos (p. 313).
Peace was not wholly welcome either to the younger officers or to
some of the sailors. In 1815, as in 1763 there were some who openly
expressed their regret. One example is a parody of Dibdin, entitled
_The Midshipman’s Lamentation_. It begins ‘What is it to you if my eye
I am piping?’ If the peace is a fact he trembles to think what his next
station will be:
‘Four years of my time I’ve served and better,
But what’s that to me? Why, it’s not worth a groat.
Besides, to the purser I am a great debtor--
I have not yet paid for my cockt hat and coat.’
No resource will be left him except to turn shoe-black:
‘How oft in the cabin I’ve studied navigation
Out of a book writ by John Hamilton Moore,
But now I’m afraid I shall soon take my station
With my brushes and black ball close to my door.’
(_Madden Collection_, Cambridge.)
A sailor took a more cheerful view of the situation:
‘When I was on the yard the topsail for to furl,
The pilot came on board and said “There’s peace with all the world”;
But if war should come again I’m damned if I won’t enter,
And for my country and my king my life and limb I’ll venture.’
(Fragment communicated by Sir J. K. Laughton.)
As at every peace, there were complaints that when the sailor was no
more needed a thankless country turned him adrift to starve. _The
British Tars_ enforces this moral (p. 316). Sailors who remained in
the service had a different cause of complaint, namely, the increasing
strictness of discipline in minor matters. ‘About 1806,’ says Clowes,
on the authority of Lord Dundonald, ‘undue prominence began to be
assigned to what is still vulgarly called in the service “spit and
polish.” Too much importance was attached to “the brightening of brass
heads, of bitts, and capstan hoops,” and too little to the condition of
the ship as a fighting machine’ (_Royal Navy_, v. 19). After the peace
this tendency increased, and the discomforts of a sailor’s life in a
smart ship with a martinet for her captain became the theme of several
ballads. _The Fancy Frigate_, _The Saucy Scylla_, and _The Vanguard_
are examples of this (pp. 316-21).
An older grievance now ended. Impressment had risen to its
height during the great war with France. In a volume of
Northumbrian Minstrelsy published by the Society of Antiquaries of
Newcastle-upon-Tyne are many songs referring to the press-gang.
‘Here’s the tender coming pressing all the men!
Oh, dear hinny, what shall we do then?
Here’s the tender coming off at Shields’ bar,
Here’s the tender coming full of men-of-war.’
Another is a woman’s lament:
‘Oh, the lousy cutter,
They’ve taen my laddie frae me,
They’ve pressed him far away foreign
Wi’ Nelson ayont the salt sea.
‘They always come in the night,
They never come in the day;
They always come in the night
And steal the laddies away.’
A certain Captain Bover was particularly energetic in pressing men, of
whom a sailor and his lass thus sing:
‘Where hes ti’ been, maw canny hinny,
Where hes ti’ been, maw winsome man?
Aw’ve been ti’ the norrard,
Cruising back and forrard,
Aw’ve been ti’ the norrard,
Cruising sair and lang,
Aw’ve been ti’ the norrard, cruising back and forrard,
But daurna come ashore for Bover and his gang.’
(L. Smith, _Music of the Waters_, 1888, p. 112.)
When the war ended the press-gang lost its very real terrors, though
their memory long survived in tradition. It became a subject for
sentimental or burlesque treatment, as in _Oh Cruel!_ and the _Answer_
to that song. Its special function in the sentimental ballads printed
during the first half of the nineteenth century was to prevent the
course of true love from running smooth:
‘This jolly young sailor, as true is reported,
Had been but a very few weeks on the shore
But as he and his love together was walking,
By a large press he from her was tore.’
A villainous rival invariably availed himself of its assistance:
‘A friendly voice young William hailed;
A ruffian gang the youth assailed;
’Twas done by cursed gold.
The tender for the offing stood,
The cutter skimmed the yielding flood,
They hatched him in the hold.’
(_Young William._)