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> Martin Carthy > Songs > Ship in Distress
> Dave Swarbrick > Songs > Ship in Distress

The Ship in Distress

[ Roud 807 ; Ballad Index ShH90 ; trad.]

A.L. Lloyd sang this ballad from The Penguin Book of English Folk Songs in about 1956 on his, Ewan MacColl's and Harry H. Corbett's album The Singing Sailor. This track has been reissued lots of times, e.g. on their albums Shanties and Fo'c'sle Songs (Wattle Records) and Haul on the Bowlin' (Stinson Records) and on the compilation CD Sailors' Songs & Sea Shanties. Lloyd commented in the Haul on the Bowlin' sleeve notes:

The story of the ship adrift, with its crew reduced to cannibalism but rescued in the nick of time, has a fascination for makers of sea legends. Cecil Sharp, who collected more than a thousand songs from Somerset, considered The Ship in Distress to be the grandest tune he had found in that country.

Louis Killen sang The Ship in Distress in 1964 on the Topic anthology Farewell Nancy: Sea Songs and Shanties. This album was reissued with bonus tracks in 1993 as the CD Blow the Man Down: A Collection of Sea Songs and Shanties. Again, A.L. Lloyd commented in the liner notes:

A 16^th century Portuguese ballad, La Nau Catarineta, told of a ship in distress with the starving crew casting lots at to who should be killed and eaten (the sands of Portugal are spotted just in time). Catarineta, a powerful symbol of Portugal's golden age of navigation, was imitated in many European countries. England seems to have got her version from the French ballad La Corte Paille (The Short Straw). Evidently the song was very common in the south of England. George Butterworth turned up several versions in Sussex, half a century ago. Words and tune here are from The Penguin Book of English Folk Songs.

Martin Carthy recorded this ballad for his 1968 album with Dave Swarbrick, But Two Came By; it was reissued on the compilation album This Is... Martin Carthy. He commented in the original album's sleeve notes:

The Ship in Distress was the subject of a parody by [W.M.] Thackeray, which itself is sung frequently in folk song clubs, Little Billie, but the sense of the song is the same. Becalmed for days and out of food the crew of a ship draw lots for which of them shall die and serve as food for the rest to give some of them a last chance of survival. One is selected, and while keeping his last watch before his death, is delivered by the sight of a rescue ship.

A live version from February 17, 1990 at McCabe's Guitar Shop, Santa Monica, California, was included in the Dave Swarbrick anthology Swarb!. (Byker Hill on the album Life and Limb is from the same gig.) Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick recorded this song for a third time for their 2006 album Straws in the Wind. Carthy commented:

On the face of it, it seems clear that Ship in Distress, with its theme of cannibalism narrowly averted, was the model for W.M. Thackeray's spoof Little Billee. However according to A.L. Lloyd, both songs have a common root in a French song entitled La Courte Paille (The Short Straw) where the prospective dinner / cabin boy sees Babylon and the coast of Barbary at the moment of his deliverance. Dave and I have been doing this song for the last forty years or so and for us it retains its majesty and its horror. And all in just three verses.

Lyrics

You seamen bold who plough the ocean
See dangers landsmen never know.
'Tis not for honour or promotion;
No tongue can tell what they undergo.
In the blusterous wind and the great dark water
Our ship went drifting on the sea,
Her rigging gone, and her rudder broken,
Which brought us to extremity.

For fourteen days, heartsore and hungry,
Seeing but wild water and bitter sky,
Poor fellows all stood in a totter,
A-casting lots as to who should die.
Their lot it fell on Robert Jackson,
Whose family was so great.
“I'm free to die, but oh, me comrades,
Let me keep look-out till the break of day.”

A full dressed ship like the sun a-glittering
Came bearing down to their relief.
As soon as this glad news was shouted,
It banished all their care and grief.
Our ship brought to, no longer drifting,
Safe in Saint Vincent, Cap Verde, she lay.
You seamen all, who hear my story,
Pray you'll ne'er suffer the like again.

Acknowledgements

Lyris taken from The Penguin Book of English Folk Songs, ed. Ralph Vaughan Williams and A.L. Lloyd, Penguin, 1959:96, and adapted to the actual singing of Martin Carthy by Garry Gillard.