"The John B. Sails" is a folk song that first appeared in a 1917 American novel, Pieces of Eight, written by Richard Le Gallienne. The "secret" narrator of the story describes it as "one of the quaint Nassau ditties."

Carl Sandburg included it in his 1927 collection of folksongs, The American Songbag, as "The John B. Sails." He states that he collected it from John & Evelyn McCutchen who told him, "Time and usage have given this song almost the dignity of a national anthem around Nassau. The weathered ribs of the historic craft lie imbedded in the sand at Governor's Harbor, whence an expedition, especially sent up for the purpose in 1926, extracted a knee of horseflesh and a ring-bolt. These relics are now preserved and built into the Watch Tower, designed by Mr. Howard Shaw and built on our southern coast a couple of points east by north of the star Canopus." John McCutchen was a political cartoonist from Chicago.

Also known as "The Wreck of the John B."

I learned the song in the mid-1950s from Carl Sandburg's book. In 1959, while singing in a Seattle coffeehouse, someone requested it. So I sang it. He grouched afterward, complaining that I hadn't sung it right. I hadn't done it like The Kingston Trio. I told him where I'd learned it—from a book of folk songs a famous American poet had collected. And that the book had been published in 1927. And that 1927 was before the members of The Kingston Trio had even been born. So if anyone was singing it wrong. . . .

The Beach Boys recorded it in 1966. Probably learned it from a Kingston Trio record.

By the way, the liner notes on The Kingston Trio's 1958 album lists "The Sloop John B." as "traditional."

Don Firth