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The Flying Cloud

[ Roud 1802 ; Laws K28 ; Ballad Index LK28 ; trad.]

Ewan MacColl sang The Flying Cloud in 1956 on his and A.L. Lloyd's Topic LP The Singing Sailor; this track was also included six years later on their American LP on the Stinson label, Haul on the Bowlin' and in 2004 on the anthology CD Sailors' Songs & Sea Shanties.

Louis Killen recorded The Flying Cloud in 1965 for his Topic album Ballads & Broadsides. This recording was also included in 1993 on the Topic compilation CD Blow the Man Down. Angela Carter commented in the liner notes of Killen's album:

There was nothing of the rakish, jolly, romantic pirate of pantomime and nursery lore about the real lives of the brutal criminals of the high seas who flourished in the early nineteenth century and before. Despite its beautiful name, The Flying Cloud was such a pirate vessel, if not in reality—for no records has come to light of a pirate ship called The Flying Cloud—then in the imagination of scores of traditional singers. This harsh and violent ballad, cast in the form of a confession from the gallows, depicts the worst of piracy on the Atlantic and the Caribbean in the early 1800s, when piracy and the slave trade often went hand in bloody had. Doerflinger (Shantymen and Shantyboys, New York, 1951) suggests the ballad-makers were originally inspired by a pamphlet, The Dying Declaration of Nicholas Fernandez, the purported confession of a notorious pirate on the eve of his execution in 1829—curiously enough, published as a temperance tract. The song is widely known in North America as well as in Britain. In Nova Scotia, the collector Elizabeth Greenleaf observed the tremendous emotional impact it made on audiences at singing gatherings in the nineteen twenties. At one time, it was an especial favourite with landlubbers in Canadian lumber camps. Most versions are broadly similar in text and tune.

Louis Killen recorded The Flying Cloud for a second time in 1995 for his CD Sailors, Ships & Chanteys. He commented:

Perhaps more well known in New England than in Old England, this confession ballad was a test piece among singers on the Grand Banks schooners. If you couldn't sing this ballad to the satisfaction of the crew you wouldn't be considered a “singer”.

Lyrics

Louis Killen sings The Flying Cloud

My name is William Hollander, as you will understand
I was born in the County of Waterford, in Erin's lovely land,
When I was young and in my prime, a beauty on me shone,
And my parents doted upon me, I being their only son.

My father bound me to a trade in Waterford's fair town,
He bound me to a cooper there by the name of William Brown.
I served my master faithfully for seven long years or more
Till I shipped aboard The Ocean Queen belonging to Tramore.

And soon we reached Bermuda's isle where I met with Captain Moore,
The commander of the Flying Cloud from out of Baltimore,
He asked me if I'd ship with him on a slaving voyage to go,
To the burning shores of Africa, where the sugar cane does grow.

It was after some weeks of sailing we arrived off Africa's shore,
Five hundred of them poor slaves, me boys, from their native land we bore.
We marched them up upon a plank and stowed them down below,
Scarce eighteen inches to a man was all they had to go.

Then the plague and the fever came on board, swapped half of them away.
We dragged their bodies up on deck and hove them in the sea,
It was better for the rest of them if they had died below
Than to work beneath the cruel planters in Cuba for evermore.

For it was after some stormy weather, boys, we arrived off Cuba shore
And we sold them to the planters there to be slaves for evermore,
For the rice and coffee seed to sow beneath the brilliant sun
And to lead a lone and wretched life till their career was run.

Well it's now our money is all spent, we must go to sea again,
When Captain Moore comes on the deck and says unto us men,
“There's gold and silver to be had if with me you'll remain,
We'll hoist the pirate flag aloft and scour the Spanish Main.”

We all agreed but three young men who were told us then to land.
Two of them were Boston boys, the other from New Foundland,
But I wish to God I joined those men and went with them on shore
Than to lead a wild and reckless life serving under a Captain Moore.

The Flying Cloud was a Yankee ship, five hundred tons or more,
She could outsail any clipper ship hailing out of Baltimore,
With her canvas white as the driven snow and on it there's no specks,
And forty men and fourteen guns she carried below her decks.

For we sacked and plundered many a ship down upon the Spanish Main,
Caused many a widow and orphan in sorrow to remain.
To the crews we gave no quarter but gave them watery graves,
For the saying of our captain was: “Dead men will tell no tales.”

And pursued we were by many a ship, by frigates and liners too,
Till at last, the British man-o-war, the Dungeness, hove in view,
She fired a shot across our bows as we sailed before the wind,
Till a chain-shot cut our mainmast down and we fell far behind.

How our crew they beat to quarters as they ranged up alongside,
Soon across our quarter-deck there ran a crimson tide.
We fought till Captain Moore was killed and fifteen of our men,
till a bombshell set our ship on fire, we had to surrender then.

So it's now to Newgate we were brought, bound down in iron chains,
For the sinking and the plundering of ships on the Spanish Main.
The judge he found us guilty, we were condemned to die.
Oh young men, a warning by me take, lead not such a life as I.

So it's fare you well, old Waterford and the girl I do adore,
I'll never kiss your cheek again, I'll squeeze your hand no more,
Oh whiskey and bad company first made a wretch of me,
Oh young men, a warning by me take and shun all piracy.

Links

See also the Mudcat Café thread Origins: The Flying Cloud.