THE JACK OF HEARTS.
THE time is not yet come—but come it will—when the masts of our Royal Navy shall be unshipped, and huge unsightly chimneys be erected in their place. The trident will be taken out of the hand of Neptune, and replaced by the effigy of a red hot poker; the Union Jack will look like a smoke-jack; and Lambtons, Russels, and Adairs, will be made Admirals of the Black; the forecastle will be called the Newcastle, and the cockpit will be termed the coal-pit; a man-of-war’s tender will be nothing but a Shields’ collier: first lieutenants will have to attend lectures on the steam-engine, and midshipmen must take lessons as climbing boys in the art of sweeping flues. In short, the good old tune of “Rule Britannia,” will give way to “Polly put the Kettle on;” while the Victory, the Majestic, and the Thunderer of Great Britain will “paddle in the burn,” like the Harlequin, the Dart, and the Magnet of Margate.
It will be well for our song writers to bear a wary eye to the Fleet, if they would prosper as Marine Poets. Some sea Gurney may get a seat at the Admiralty Board, and then farewell, a long farewell, to the old ocean imagery; marine metaphor will require a new figure-head. Flowing sheets, snowy wings, and the old comparison of a ship to a bird, will become obsolete and out of date! Poetical topsails will be taken aback, and all such things as reefs and double reefs will be shaken out of song. For my own part, I cannot be sufficiently thankful that I have not sought a Helicon of salt water; or canvassed the Nine Muses as a writer for their Marine Library; or made Pegasus a sea-horse, when sea-horses as well as land-horses are equally likely to be superseded by steam. After such a consummation, when the sea service, like the tea service, will depend chiefly on boiling water, it is very doubtful whether the Fleet will be worthy of anything but plain prose. I have tried to adapt some of our popular blue ballads to the boiler, and Dibdin certainly does not steam quite so well as a potato. However, if his Sea Songs are to be in immortal use, they will have to be revised and corrected in future editions thus:—
I steamed from the Downs in the Nancy,
My jib how she smoked through the breeze.
She’s a vessel as tight to my fancy
As ever boil’d through the salt seas.
* * * * * *
When up the flue the sailor goes
And ventures on the pot,