CAPTAIN WARD AND THE RAINBOW
The Text is from a broadside in the Bagford collection (i. 65); other broadsides, very similar, are to be found in the Pepys, Roxburghe, and other collections. The ballad has often been reprinted; and more than one oral version has been recovered—much corrupted in transmission.
The Story is apocryphal, as has been shown by research undertaken since Child annotated the ballad; so also are other broadsides, The Seamen’s Song of Captain Ward and The Seamen’s Song of Dansekar, which deal with Ward. He was a Kentish fisherman, born at Feversham about 1555, who turned pirate after a short service aboard the Lion’s Whelp man-of-war. The Rainbow was the name of a ship then in the navy, often mentioned in reports from 1587 onwards; but Professor Sir J. K. Laughton has pointed out that she never fought with Ward. Possibly Rainbow is a corruption of Tramontana, a small cruiser which may have chased him once in the Irish Channel. The fullest account of Ward may be found in an article, unsigned, but written by Mr. John Masefield, in the Gentleman’s Magazine for March, 1906, pp. 113-126.