sea songs

sea songs, the generic name given either to songs sung at sea by sailors in their leisure time, or to songs sung ashore about the sea, which more often than not were never sung by seamen. They differ entirely from the shanty, which was always a working song, and never sung on board except when required for an actual job of work.

The songs sung on board ship were known as forebitter or forecastle songs. It is almost certain that these names arose because the sailors gathered around the fore bitts on the forecastle to sing them. They were home-made songs which usually adopted the tune of an already existing song which was known by most men on board. The words could describe anything from a famous naval battle (see butter-box) to a sailor's grouse about conditions on board his ship, could tell a story of an adventure ashore, usually amatory, or be rankly sentimental to start the seamen thinking of home and family life. One of the best known of the British forebitters was ‘The Limejuice Ship’, a song which recalls both the Merchant Shipping Acts of 1844 and 1867, which made a daily issue of lime juice (see limey) compulsory to all merchant seamen to prevent scurvy, and the Merchant Shipping Act of 1894, which laid down minimum scales of victuals in merchant ships and brought seamen other rights in the way of hours of employment, rates of pay, etc. The words of the song ran:Now if you want a merchant ship to sail the seas at large,
You'll not have any trouble if you have a good discharge,
Signed by the Board of Trade, and everything exact,
For there's nothin' done on a limejuice ship contrary to the Act.
So haul, boys, your weather main brace and ease away your lee,
Hoist jib and topsails, lads, an' let the ship go free,
Hurrah, boys, hurrah; we'll sing this jubilee,
‘You can keep the navy, boys, a merchant ship for me.’
The other type of sea song, written, composed, and sung ashore, almost invariably tried to tell of the glories and delights of a life at sea, which the average sailor of the days of sail knew, only too well, painted a picture so false that he would have none of it. This was probably the reason why they were never adopted as part of the pattern of life on board. An early sea song was the aria ‘Come away, fellow sailors, come away’, which opens the second act of Henry Purcell's opera Dido and Aeneas, written in 1689, but the best known of them all was ‘Heart of Oak’. This song was an exception in that it was played on board British warships, but not usually sung, when they were sailing into battle, as was ‘Britons Strike Home’. ‘Rule Britannia’ was, too, though it was sung as well. It was, and is, so popular that it is generally recognized today as the official march of the Royal Navy.

The greatest writer of sea songs of this type was the British actor, dramatist, and song writer Charles Dibdin (1745–1814). In 1789 he produced a variety show Oddities, in which he introduced some nautical songs, the best known being ‘Tom Bowling’, ‘Saturday Night at Sea’, and ‘The Good Ship Rover’. The ‘Rogue's March’, which was beaten on drums during the course of the naval punishment flogging round the fleet, was based on Dibdin's ‘Right Little, Tight Little Island’. He wrote some hundreds of such songs which he made popular by singing himself. As he lived during the period of the great naval wars at the end of the 18th century, many of his songs had a considerable recruiting value at a time when the British Navy was desperate for men to sail the greatly increasing number of ships. Such a song was:A sailor's life's the life for me,
He takes his duty merrily;
If winds can whistle, he can sing;
Still faithful to his friend and King;
He gets beloved by all his ship,
And toasts his girl and drinks his flip.
One of the oldest, and probably best-known, and best-loved, songs of the sea is ‘Spanish Ladies’. It was probably written and first sung in 1694–5, when the British fleet wintered at Cadiz. Captain Marryat, in his novel Poor Jack, gives the earliest complete version known but the song was an old one long before Marryat joined the British Navy. It has five verses and a chorus, and though there are many small differences in wording in the various versions, perhaps the best known runs as follows:Fare ye well and adieu to you, fair Spanish ladies;
Fare ye well and adieu to you, ladies of Spain,
For we have got orders for to sail back to old England,
But we hope in a short time for to see you again.
Chorus: Then we'll rant and we'll roar like true British seamen,
We'll rant and we'll roar all across the salt seas,
Until we strike soundings in the Channel of old England;
From Ushant to Scilly is thirty-five leagues.
We hove the ship to with the wind at sou'-west, my boys;
We hove the ship to for to strike soundings clear.
We had forty-five fathom and a fine sandy bottom,
So we filled the main topsail and up Channel we steer.
(Chorus, as before)
The first land we made, 'twas the head called the Dodman,
Next Rame Head near Plymouth, Start, Portland, and Wight;
So we sailed by Beachy, by Fairlee, and Dungeness,
Where we bore right away for the South Foreland Light.
(Chorus)
Then let every man toss off a full bumper,
And let every man swig off a full bowl;
For we'll drink and be jolly and drown melancholy,
With a ‘Here's a good health to each true-hearted soul.’
(Chorus)
The 19th century brought Gilbert and Sullivan's HMS Pinafore with its quota of sea songs, immensely popular ashore but not sung on board, while perhaps the best-known 20th-century sea song is John Ireland's setting of John Masefield's haunting ‘Sea Fever’:I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking
And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking.
But here again, this was never a song sung by sailors at sea.

The most complete collection of sea songs is Naval Songs and Ballads, edited for the Navy Records Society by C. H. Firth in 1908.
Also see:

Bibliography

Fox Smith, C. , Sea Songs and Ballads (1923).
Palmer, R. , The Valiant Sailor (1973).
Whall, W. H. , Sea Songs and Shanties (1920).