“Whisking his tail a flying eel
Struck a three decker’s cockle’s keel
(The vessel was the navy’s boast,
And lay at anchor near the coast).
“Ungovernable from the stroke,
Quick from her netting-pin she broke;
With rude concussion struck the shore,
Then bilged, and sank, to ride no more.
“Boats from the cockle-shells at hand
Were quickly lower’d down and mann’d,
The gallant mariners to save—
To snatch them from a wat’ry grave.
“Scar’d at a spectacle so shocking,
Each ’prentice boy doff’d shoe and stocking,
Wading knee-deep, with shorten’d breath,
To snatch the struggling tars from death.
“An angler threw his fishing-line
Into the ruffled Serpentine;
Hook’d up the ship with no small pain,
And dragg’d her from the mimic main.
“See the tri-coloured cockles run,
The gaping crowd enjoy the fun;
Some still maintain a running fight
Some strike, some sink to endless night!
“ ‘Lord! ’twas a glorious fight,’ says Dick;
‘Monsieur at last got devilish sick!’
‘Then ’twas a real fight,’ cry’d Sam;
‘Why, lad, I thought it all a sham!’
“ ‘Real! no, no!’ says Jack, ‘you fool!
’Twas all a bit of ridicule;
To show us lubbers, I’ve a notion,
How things are done upon the ocean.’ ”
There was another satirical poem on this Naumachia, entitled “An Extraordinary Gazette, containing dispatches from Admiral Squib, giving a detailed account of A Great Naval Victory obtained over the combined fleets of France and America, in the Great Serpentine Sea, on the 1st August, 1814,”—a small portion of which I transcribe.
“Now since, as you will understand,
This mighty Sea is quite inland,
It to their Lordships will appear
Strange, how the d——l we got here.
. . . . . . . . . .
A council call’d, some doubts were made,
Whether the ships could be convey’d;
Which I, who knew my men, dispell’d,
And every thought of failure quell’d.