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Bold Benjamin-O

[ Roud 2632 ; Ballad Index VWL023 ; trad.]

Cyril Tawney sang the nautical ballad Bold Benjamin-O from The Penguin Book of English Folk Songs on the album Farewell Nancy. Peter Bellamy, Heather Wood and Royston Wood sang Bold Benjamin-O on the latter two's 1977 album No Relation. The sleeve notes comment laconically:

There must be a tremendous story behind this song—but the song doesn't tell it.

And Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick recorded Bold Benjamin for their 2006 album Straws in the Wind. Maertin Carthy commented in the sleeve notes:

I think that anyone who has even a passing interest in sea shanties would truly bust a gut to know what such songs sounded like before the advent of the clipper ships and their like—simply because songs were inevitably recycled to suit the new need. I think that it's true that nothing is much older than perhaps 150 years in that most functional of all folk musics. A.L. Lloyd quotes C.H. Firth of the Navy Records Society writing in 1908 wondering aloud whether the form of Bold Benjamin suggested an earlier existence as a shanty. Tantalising. The song itself is one of these small jewels tucked away among the many songs of naval triumph to be found in our traditional song but which instead records one of the utter disasters. According to Lloyd there is apparently no record of the engagement nor the luckless gent who brought such misfortune upon his men. Whether he was Brave Admiral Cole, as in the song, or one Captain Chilvers in an earlier—and in many ways quite different—version from 1670 printed in the Roxburghe Ballads, to have lost 439 out of 500 counts, I think, as a calamity. It's one clever tune too, in the way it plays with the accent on the repeated lines.

Lyrics

Martin Carthy sings Bold Benjamin-O

Brave Admiral Cole he's gone to sea, oh my boys-O
Admiral Cole he's gone to sea-O
Brave Admiral Cole he has gone to sea
Along of our ship's company
On board the bold Benjamin-O

We sail-ed our course away for Spain, oh my boys-O
Sailed our course away for Spain-O
Sail-ed our course away for Spain
Our silver and gold for to gain
On board the bold Benjamin-O

We sail-ed out five hundred men, oh my boys-O
Sailed out five hundred men-O
We sail-ed out five hundred men
And we brought back but sixty one
They were lost in bold Benjamin-O

And when we come to Blackwall, oh my boys-O
When we come to Blackwall-O
And when we come to Blackwall
Our captain so loudly did call
Here comes the bold Benjamin-O

Here's the mothers crying for their sons, oh my boys-O
The mothers crying for their sons-O
Here's the mothers crying for their sons
And the widows all for their husbands
That were lost in bold Benjamin-O

Acknowledgements

Lyris taken from The Penguin Book of English Folk Songs, ed. Ralph Vaughan Williams and A.L. Lloyd, Penguin, 1959:23, and adapted to the actual singing of Martin Carthy by Garry Gillard.