It ofttimes has been told

That the British sailors bold

Could flog the tars of France so neat and handy, O.

And they never found their match

Till the Yankees did them catch.

Oh, the Yankee boys for fighting are the dandy, O.

The Guerriere, a frigate bold,

On the foaming ocean rolled,

Commanded by proud Dacres, the grandee, O.

With choice of British crew,

As ever rammer drew,

They could flog the Frenchmen two to one so handy, O.

When this frigate hove in view,

Says proud Dacres to his crew,

"Come, clear the ship for action, and be handy, O.

To the weather-gage, boys, get her,"

And to make his men fight better

Gave them to drink gunpowder in their brandy, O.

Then Dacres loudly cries,

"Make this Yankee ship your prize!

You can in thirty minutes, neat and handy, O.

Thirty-five's enough, I'm sure;

And if you 'll do it in a score,

I'll give you a double dose of brandy, O."

The British shot flew hot,

Which the Yankee answered not,

Till they got within the distance they called handy, O.

Now says Hull unto his crew,

"Boys, let's see what we can do.

If we take this boasting Briton, we 're the dandy, O."

The first broadside we poured

Carried their mainmast by the board,

Which made the lofty frigate look abandoned, O.

Then Dacres shook his head,

And to his officers he said,

"Lord! I did n't think these Yankees were so handy, O."

Our second told so well

That their fore and mizzen fell,

Which doused the royal ensign so handy, O.

"By George," says he, "we 're done!"

And he fired a lee gun,

While the Yankees struck up Yankee doodle dandy, O.

Then Dacres came on board

To deliver up his sword.

Loath was he to part with it, it was so handy, O.

"O, keep your sword," says Hull,

"For it only makes you dull.

So cheer up; let us take a little brandy, O."

Come, fill your glasses full,

And we 'll drink to Captain Hull,

And so merrily will push about the brandy, O.

John Bull may toast his fill,

Let the world say what it will,

But the Yankee boys for fighting are the dandy, O.

The English celebrated their one signal victory of the war—the capture of the Chesapeake by the Shannon, off Boston Light, a year later—by a parody of this song, of a decidedly inferior quality.

One of the most notable events of the war was the cruise of the Essex, Captain David Porter, in the South Pacific, in 1813 and 1814. She did an immense amount of damage to the British whalemen, and the British ships Cherub and Phoebe were sent to capture her. After a rencontre in the harbor of Valparaiso, in which the captain of the Phoebe, taken at a disadvantage, protested his purpose to respect the neutrality of the port, and a challenge from which the British ships ran away, the Essex was caught disabled by a squall, chased into a harbor near Valparaiso, and captured after a tremendous engagement, in which the calibre of the British guns gave them every advantage, and in which the neutrality of the port was not taken into account. There was a poet on board the Essex, and he produced a long ballad describing the cruise and the retreat of the British ships after the challenge; but whether he perished in the later fight, or had no heart to add it to his verses, is not known. Among the crew of the Essex who did survive the fight was Midshipman David G. Farragut, who lived to achieve the greatest naval renown since that of Nelson, and be the theme of The Bay Fight, the noblest sea poem yet written.

The ballad of the Essex is entitled "A Pleasant New Song. Chanted by Nathan Whiting (through his nose) for the amusement of the galley slaves on board the Phoebe, who are allowed to sing nothing but psalms." After describing the beginning of the trouble caused by "John Bull's taking our ships and kidnaping our true sailors," and the capture of British vessels in the first year of the war, the ballad takes up the cruise of the Essex.

The saucy Essex, she sailed out

To see what she could do.

Her captain is from Yankee land,

And so are all her crew.

Away she sailed, so gay and trim,

Down to the Galapagos,

And toted all the terrapins,

And nabbed the slippery whalers.

And where d' ye think we next did go?

Why, down to the Marquesas.

And there we buried underground

Some thousand golden pieces.

Then sailed about the ocean wide,

Sinking, burning, taking,

Filling pockets, spilling oil,

While Johnny's heart was aching.

The ballad then describes the arrival of the Phoebe and Cherub and the rencontre in Valparaiso Bay, the challenge and the flight of the Phoebe, in verses which have a great deal of rude vigor.

At last John Bull quite sulky grew,

And called us traitors all,

And swore he'd fight our gallant crew,

Paddies and Scots and all.

Then out he went in desperate rage,

Swearing, as sure as day,

He'd starve us all or dare us out

Of Valparaiso Bay.

Then out he sailed in gallant trim,

As if he thought to fright us,

Run up his flag and fired a gun

To say that he would fight us.

Our cables cut, we put to sea,

And ran down on his quarter,

And Johnny clapped his helm hard up,

And we went following after.

In haste to join the Cherub he

Soon bent his scurvy way,

While we returned in merry glee

To Yalaparaiso Bay.

And let them go. To meet the foe

We 'll take no farther trouble,

Since all the world must fairly know

They 'll only fight us double.

Ne'er mind, my lads, let's drink and sing,

"Free trade and sailors' rights."

May liquor never fail the lad

Who for his country fights.

Huzza, my lads, let's drink and sing,

And toast them as they run:

"Here's to the sailors and their king

Who 'll fight us two to one."

There were other exploits of American ships told in verse, among them the gallant repulse, by the crew of the privateer General Armstrong, Captain Samuel C. Reid, in the Harbor of Fayal, of the boats of three British men-of-war, which was the subject of a forecastle ballad, but none of this memorial verse reached the level of poetry. The battles of Lake Erie and Lake Champlain also had their numerous laureates; and the raid of Admiral Cockburn and the troops upon Baltimore was the subject of a song, the opening lines of which have a vigor and strong rhythm not maintained throughout.

Old Ross, Cochrane, and Cockburn too,

And many a bloody villain more,

Swore with their bloody, savage crew

That they would plunder Baltimore.

The naval service during the civil war did not produce any songs that achieved popularity in comparison with that won by the songs of land service, like John Brown's Body, The Year of Jubilo, and Marching through Georgia, and in fact was singularly deficient in poetry, with the remarkable exception of the productions of Mr. Henry Howard Brownell. There were few singleship engagements except the fight between the Monitor and the Merrimac, and the Kearsarge and the Alabama, and the blockading service was not calculated to inspire the martial muse.

The two great naval achievements of the war were the capture of New Orleans and of the forts in Mobile Bay by the fleets under Farragut; and these were celebrated in poetry worthy of them—and no more can be said—by Henry Howard Brownell, who witnessed the second from the deck of Admiral Farragut's flagship. The fire, spirit, and grand fighting elan of The Bay Fight have never been surpassed in English poetry, and the accuracy of its pictures is as notable as their vigor. But these are poems, and not songs, and there is nothing in the naval songs of the civil war which will compare with those of the war of 1812. It was rather past the time for the genuine forecastle ballad, and none of the land poets hit the true vein, as Buchanan Read, Stedman, and others did when commemorating military exploits.

There was one other field of American seamanship, full of romance and excitement, which should have produced some worthy poetry and song, and that was the whaling service before the days of iron steamers and bomb lances. The chase of the gigantic cetacean in the lonely solitude of the Arctic and Indian oceans, the fights in frail boats with the maddened monster and all the perils of sea and storm, the visits to the palmy islands in the Southern Sea and the frozen solitude of the Arctic, were full of the materials of poetry. The long watches of the monotonous cruising during the four years' voyage gave plenty of time for any occupation, whether it was carving whales' teeth or making verses; and there were many bright spirits, attracted by the adventure of whaling, who could have made a literary use of their opportunity. The novels of Herman Melville, some of the strongest and most original in our literature, have given the romance of the South Sea islands as they appeared to the adventurer of that day; and in Moby Dick, or The White Whale, he has shown both the prose and the poetry of a whaling cruise with singular power, although with some touch of extravagance at the end. The whaling songs are, however, not very abundant, nor, it must be confessed, of a high standard of quality. To this there is one remarkable exception, which appears to be wholly unknown in American literature, although it has been in print. It is entitled a "Brand Fire New Whaling Song Right from the Pacific Ocean. Tune, Maggy Lander. By a Foremast Hand," and was printed in a little five-cent pamphlet, by E. B. Miller, in New Bedford, in 1831. It does not seem to have come under the eye of any critic who could appreciate its spirit and faithfulness, and no mention is made of it in any of the collections of American poetry. It is extremely doubtful if the author received enough from its sale to repay him for the investment of a portion of his "lay" in printing it, and his name is utterly lost in his modest pseudonym of "Foremast Hand;" so that he obtained neither fame nor fortune from his epic. The poem, which is too long for entire quotation, was unquestionably the work of a sailor on a whaling ship, and probably, as he says, of a foremast hand. It lacks some of the finish of professional literature, as shown in the ruggedness of some of its rhymes, and the vigorous compulsion of the rules of grammar and syntax, when necessary, although the author was evidently of higher education than would belong to one in his position, and its jigging measure becomes tiresome; but it is of very great spirit and vigor, as well as fidelity to its theme, and by no means deserves to have fallen so entirely into oblivion. Indeed, it seems to me to be quite as good as, and a great deal more original than, any American poetry which had appeared up to that time. The song has for its subject the chase and capture of a whale in the North Pacific, and relates the course of events from the time of the first sighting of "white water" on the horizon by the lookouts to that when the monster, stabbed to death by the keen lances, rolls "fins out" in the bloody water, amid the hurrahs of the excited boats' crews. All the details of this grande chasse are given with wonderful vigor, as well as faithfulness, and the historian of the whale fishery will find it as accurate as a log-book. Perhaps the account of the chase by the boats and the harpooning will give as good an idea of the force and spirit of the poem as any part of it; and, in reference to the emphasis of the language, it may be remembered that mates of whaling ships in pursuit of an eight-hundred-barrel whale had a good deal of energy and excitement to relieve. The boats have been lowered, and are darting toward the unsuspecting whale with all the speed of ashen oars and vigorous muscle, while their commanders objurgate and stimulate the crews, as the poet says, "judiciously."

"Pull, men, for, lo, see there they blow!

They 're going slow as night, too.

Pull, pull, you dogs! they lie like logs,—

Thank Heaven they 're headed right, too."

"The chance is ours!" the mate now roars.

"Spring, spring, nor have it said, men,

That we could miss a chance like this

To take them head and head, men.

There's that old sog, he's like a log.

Spring, lads, and show your mettle;

Strain every oar; let's strike before

He's- gallied, mill-, or-settle-."

And so it is, the chance is his.

The others peak their oars now.

From his strained eyes the lightning flies,

And lion-like he roars now.

"Pull, pull, my lads! why don't you pull?

For God's sake, pull away, men!

Hell's blazes! pull but three strokes more,

And we have won the day, men!

"Stand up there, forward—pull the rest—

Hold water—give it to her!

Stern all, stern all—God damn it, heave

Your other iron through her!

We 're fast, we 're fast—stern out her way!

Here, let me come ahead, men.

There, peak your oars—wet—line—wet—line—

Why, bloody zounds, you 're dead, men!"

The rush of the whale towing the boat, his sounding to the uttermost length of the line, his reappearance, the lancing, the mad dash at the boats, and the death flurry are all described with great vividness, but there is room only for the verses in which the monster comes up from his long dive, and obliges the poet to appeal to the enemy of sea songs, the steam boiler:—

Till from the deep, with mighty leap,

Full length the monster breaches,—

So strongly sped, his scarred gray head

High as our topmast reaches;

And, like a rock, with startling shock,

From mountain height descending,

Down thunders he upon the sea,

Ocean with ether blending.

And, hark! once more that lengthened roar,

As from his spout-hole gushing,

His breath, long spent, now finds a vent,

Like steam from boiler rushing.

It does not seem that a poet who could write so vividly and forcefully as this ought to be without a place in American literature, even if there were no other interest in his work.

There is another whaling song, entitled The Coast of Peru, and undoubtedly the work of a forecastle poet, which is worth preserving, despite its homeliness, for its genuine flavor, and as a relic of the old days before steam whalers and bomb lances took so much of the romance out of the fishery.