SEA SONGS.
Considering that Great Britain is an island, that immense numbers of the inhabitants live in seaports, that the sea is within at hour or two of the metropolis, that there is always an abundance of sailors “knocking about” ashore, and that pretty nearly all our wealth as a nation is owing to our seamen and our shipping, it must be owned that many of those notions of Jack and his life ashore and at sea which may be found among the greatest maritime people on the face of the earth, are in the highest degree extraordinary. Is it possible that the sailor is still supposed to have nothing to do at sea but to sit down with a pipe in his mouth and let the wind blow him along? Are there people yet living who imagine that on Saturday nights at sea cans of grog are handed about, roaring nautical songs sung, and wives and sweethearts toasted? Is it even in this day of steamboats believed that a sailor cannot express himself without loading his language with marine terms; that he cannot speak of “walking,” but of “steering;” that the right-hand side ashore is the “starboard;” and that he cannot step backwards without making “sternway”?
Where do these highly nautical fellows live when they are at home? I never have the luck to come across them. In some seaports you may still see here and there, over a public-house, the sign of the Jolly Tar: a figure in flowing breeches, tarpaulin hat on “nine hairs,” a bottle of grog in one hand, and a great red nose, set in the midst of a shining face. Who was the original of that fellow? He is not a man-of-war’s man, and most certainly he is not a merchantman. I take it that he is nothing more nor less than the embodiment of the landsman’s notion of the sailor obtained to a large extent from marine novels, but mainly from the English sea songs. You might walk the whole of Great Britain over without meeting with the counterpart of that effigy, unless it lay in some turnpike impostor who gets a living by swearing he has been shipwrecked. If the merchant seaman is to be typified, he must not be dressed in loose breeches and an open-breasted shirt. If his language is to be imitated, it must not altogether consist of “hard-a-lee” and “haul the bowline.” And if his life at sea is to be pictured, one must drop all reference to cans of grog, and have nothing whatever to say about Saturday nights and sweethearts and wives.
But how can landsmen be ridiculed for their absurd ideas of the sailor when for years and years writers who profess to know all about him have persisted in reproducing the same stereotyped likeness—the same drunken, singing, good-humoured, sprawling mountebank, shouting out for more grog, bawling inane verses about his Poll and his Sue, clamouring the purest “slush” about the Union Jack, and talking inconceivable nonsense about topgallants and handspikes? Of course the likeness is accepted by those who know no better, and songs are sung about Jack which no sailor can listen to without astonishment that ignorance so profound should be also so widespread. I remember a man who was much applauded in his day as a singer of nautical ballads, saying to me, “To-morrow I have to sing ‘Tom Tough,’ by desire. Can you tell me, sir, what attitude I ought to adopt when I come to—
‘So I seiz’d the capstan bar,
Like a true, honest tar,
And in spite of tears and sighs,
Sung yo, heave ho’?
Do I pull or do I push, sir?”
What did it matter? Whether he pulled or whether he pushed would have been all the same to his audience. Who but a sailor at a concert would notice that a vocalist thought it all right when he roared out—
“And at the bosun’s call,
We man the poop downhaul,
And furl the main jibboom, lads,
So, boys, so”?
Apparently, let the words employed be as nonsensical as they will, so long as there is plenty of “yohing” and “heaving” and “so-hoing,” the song is accepted as extremely nautical and peculiarly expressive of the free and open character of the sailor.
I was once in a house much frequented by seamen, when there entered the room in which I was sitting an elderly man of a somewhat sour cast of countenance, dressed—not, believe me, in that flowing rig in which all kinds of sailors are popularly supposed to go clad—but in plain black cloth and an unstarched, striped cotton shirt, with a cravat round a stand-up collar. He had the look of a man who had been at sea all his life, and consequently no marine exterior could be less suggestive than his of “So-ho’s” and “Heave ho’s,” and “Pull aways.” He called for half a pint of ale, and filled his pipe, and sat smoking and listening to a conversation between two men relative to a collision in which the vessel they had recently left was concerned. By-and-by he began to grope in his pockets, and presently produced some sheets of songs, which he held out at arm’s length the better to inspect the highly marine figure who, in sailor’s shirt and jacket, with straddled legs, immense belt, and lifted hand, embellished the titlepage of the cheap collection. He took a long look at this striking figure, frequently removing his pipe to expectorate, and then very leisurely began to examine the songs.