As often we have proved it;
the Fair American, commanded by Captain Daniel Hawthorne, which fought a British snow, laden with troops, off the coast of Portugal, and whose exploits are recorded in a ballad of very considerable spirit, and evidently by one of the crew; and some others, who did not happen to have a poet on board or a laureate on shore, and are not embalmed in verse. To this period, however, belongs what is, perhaps, the very best of American sea songs. We do not know whether its authorship was of that time or not, although it probably was, and from internal evidence would seem to have been composed by one of the very crew of the Ranger, Paul Jones's ship, which escaped from a British squadron in the Irish Channel in 1778. It was first published by Commodore Luce, in his collection of Naval Songs, with the statement that it was taken down from the recitation of a sailor. It is one of the gems of forecastle song, has the full scent of the brine and the gale, and the ship does not manouvre as if she were a wagon on dry land, as was said of Allan Cunningham's account of Paul Jones's cruises. The title given is
THE YANKEE MAN-OF-WAR.
'T is of a gallant Yankee ship that flew the stripes and stars,
And the whistling wind from the west-nor'-west blew through
the pitch-pine spars.
With her starboard tacks aboard, my boys, she hung upon the
gale,