> A.L. Lloyd > Songs > Talcahuano Girls

Talcahuano Girls / Spanish Ladies

[ Roud 687 ; Ballad Index ShH89 ; trad.]

This song about the early 19th century Pacific sperm and right whale fishing was sung by A.L. Lloyd on his album Leviathan! Ballads & Songs of the Whaling Trade. He was accompanied by Alf Edwards, English concertina; Dave Swarbrick, fiddle; Martin Carthy, mandolin; and Trevor Lucas and Martyn Wyndham-Read singing chorus. This track was reissued on the French compilation Chants de Marins IV: Ballads, Complaintes et Shanties des Matelots Anglais and on the Fellside compilation CD Classic A.L. Lloyd.

A.L. Lloyd commented in the original album's sleeve notes:

The song called Spanish Ladies was on the go among seamen in Samuel Pepys' day, but by the 1840s, Captain Mattyat (author of Midshipman Easy) reported it as “now almost forgotten.” Nevertheless it survived well in countless parodies (one of them associated with Australian drovers, as it happens). The present version belongs to the rowdy South-Seamen who, particularly during the first half of the 19th century, sailed out of London and Hull to hunt the sperm whale off the coasts of Chile and Peru. Talcahuano lies south of Valparaiso in Chile; Huasco is about midway between Vallypo and Antofagasta; Tumbez is on the Gulf of Guayanquil, near the Equator: odorous ports, all three.

Spanish Ladies was sung e.g. by Johnny Doughty on his Topic LP Round Rye Bay for More: Traditional Songs from the Sussex Coast. This track was also included in the anthology We've Received Orders to Sail (The Voice of the People Series, Vol. 12, Topic 1998).

Lyrics

A.L. Lloyd sings Talcahuano Girls

Oh, I've been a sea-cook and I've been a clipperman,
I can sing, I can dance, I can walk the jib-boom.
I can handle a harpoon and cut a fine figure
Whenever I get in a boat's standing room.

Chorus (after each verse):

And we'll rant and we'll roar like trueborn young whalermen,
We'll rant and we'll roar on deck or below,
Until we see bottom inside the two sinkers,
And straight up the channel to Huasco we'll go.

I was in Talcahuano last year in a whaler.
I bought some gold brooches for the girls in the Bay.
I bought me a pipe and they called it a meerscum,
And it melted like butter on a hot shiny day.

I went to a dance one night in old Tumbez,
There was plenty of girls there as fine as you'd wish.
There was one pretty maiden a-chewing tobacco,
Just like a young kitten a-chewing fresh fish.

Here's a health to the girls of old Talcahuano,
A health to the maidens of far-off Maui.
And let you be merry, don't be melancholy;
I can't marry youse all or in chokey I'd be.

Johnny Doughty sings Up the Channel (Spanish Ladies)

Farewell and adieu all ye Spanish ladies,
Farewell and adieu all ye daughters of Spain,
'Cause we've just received orders to sail for Old England
But shortly we hope to return back again.

Chorus (after each verse):

And we'll rant and we'll roar like a true British sailor,
We'll rant and we'll roar across the salt sea,
Until we strike soundings in the Channel of Old England,
'Cause from Ushant from Scilly is thirty-five league.

Now the first point we made was the Eddystone lightouse,
Next Ramshead off Plymouth, Start, Portland and Wight.
And then we sailed then by Beachy, by Fairlight and Dungeness
And we bore straightaway for the South Foreland light.

Now, we hove our ship to with the wind at sou'west, my boys,
We hove our ship to for to make soundings clear.
And then we brailed the main topsail and we bore right away, my boys,
Then right up the Channel our course we did steer.

Acknowledgements

The lyrics were taken from the Leviathan! sleeve notes.

See also the Mudcat Café thread Lyr/Chords Req: Spanish Ladies