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The Good Luck Ship

[ Roud 951 ; Ballad Index VWL091 ; trad.]

Norfolk singer Harry Cox sang The Good Luck Ship in a recording by the BBC on December 18, 1945. This was included on his 2 CD Topic Records anthology, The Bonny Labouring Boy. Steve Roud commented in the liner notes:

We have not been able to trace any other versions of this song, which seems to be unique to Harry. There are plenty of songs in the English tradition which detail sea-fights, and at least two which feature a ship called the Rainbow, but none are quite like this one.

Peter Bellamy learned The Good Luck Ship from the singing of Harry Cox and sang it in 1969 on his second LP, Fair England's Shore (which took its name from the second-to-last verse of this song). Peter Bellamy commented in the album's sleeve notes:

The Good Luck Ship has by no means an unusual theme—though the idea of winning out against ten-to-one odds is perhaps unusual valour, even for the Folk! Probably an early Georgian song, I learned it from Harry Cox of Norfolk, whose version of Betty the Serving Maid this melody so closely resembles.

Lyrics

Peter Bellamy sings The Good Luck Ship

Did you ever hear tell of the good luck ship?
Did you ever hear tell of the commander's name?
She's the Royal Rainbow out from Bristol town
And Captain Ramsgate was his name.

Now this good luck ship was loaded deep,
Three anchors weighed all on her bows;
And the wind it being east north east, my boys,
As close to the wind as we could steer.

Now we had not been sailing three days or four
Wnen we espied ten men-of-war,
Before we spied ten men-of-war,
And down on us they did huzzah.

So it's, “Strike, come strike, you English dogs,
Come strike your tops'ls down by speed!”
“If you've a mind for to have them strike,
Come you on board, strike them for me.”

So he called up his merry men all, saying,
“Get you ready, boys, obey my call,
Get your firelocks ready and fix them well
And throw in a-plenty of good bombshell.”

Then he called up his little cabin boy,
He sent him up aloft so high,
And there to fly King George's flag
And under that we'll fight or die.

So from the sunrise into the sun going down,
We fight like any, boys, when we meet,
From the sunrise into the sun going down
We spied not one sail of our fleet.

But three we sank and three we burned;
The other three, well, they ran away.
And one we brought safe to fair England's shore
To let them know we'd won the day.

So now, thank God, we have won the day;
We've caused the Frenchies all for to rue.
Here is Captain Ramsgate and all his crew
Let everyone give them a good huzzah!