Collected by James Madison Carpenter, Royal Alfred, Belvedere, 1928
James Madison Carpenter MSS Collection (JMC/1/5/4/A)
Carpenter did not note any words for this song. A full set of words, including two verses collected from a Mr Prosser – quite possibly William Prosser – appears in A book of shanties by Cicely Fox Smith, (Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 1927). Fox Smith wrote:
This collection may fitly conclude with an example of the sort of sea song—as distinct from the shanty—the sailorman really liked in his hours of leisure. The kind of thing that passes muster with the average landsman he had no use for, however irreproachable its music might be, however admirable its words from a literary standpoint. As a rule, indeed, the sailor did not sing sea songs : naturally enough, since he got enough of that element in his daily life to like a change now and again. His taste usually ran in the sentimental direction : “Her bright smile haunts me still,” for example, was a great favourite with forecastle vocalists.
When he did sing a sea song, it had, above everything else, to be correct—its seamanship like Caesar’s wife, its use of technical terms beyond cavil. Cunningham’s “A wet sheet and a flowing sea” is ruled out with many seamen because, though it is quite possible that Cunningham used the word “sheet” in its right sense, there is at least a doubt about it. “The Stately Southerner” meets the most critical requirements in this respect, and it is also a jolly good rousing ballad and goes to a stirring tune. It may seem curious that British forecastles should have been so partial to a song which celebrates an exploit of that picturesque renegade, John Paul Jones: probably, if the truth were known, nine times out of ten neither singer nor audience either knew or cared what the song was really about. If they thought about it at all, it is quite likely that (at any rate after the American Civil War) they imagined what the title, “The Stately Southerner,” seems to suggest, that the episode belonged to the struggle between North and South, with the latter of whom seafaring sympathy was very strong.
Mr. Prosser, who sang the song for me, could only recall the words of the first two verses, so I have completed it from other sources. It appears without the music in the late Mr. J. E. Patterson’s “Sea Anthology,” and, with the music, in Miss Joanna Colcord’s American collection.
Fox Smith’s notation of the tune is different from Carpenter’s – most notably it is in 4/4, not 6/8 – but this could simply be a difference in interpretation, and it is not impossible that both were collected from the same singer.
See https://archive.org/details/uclamusic_9930756443606533/uclamusic_9930756443606533_090.jpg and following pages.
