I've been looking at "The Flying Cloud" recently and I will revive this thread after a year's dormancy to respond to some of the comments. Joanna C. Colcord includes it in _Songs of the American Sailormen_ (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1938), pp. 144-147. This is, however, a revision of an earlier collection, _Roll and Go: Songs of American Sailormen_ (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1924); I haven't looked at a copy of this yet. The singer was Joseph MacGinnis, about whom I have no information. Colcord notes that he remembered the name of the F.C.'s nemesis imperfectly, but apparently thought it was the _Dunmore_. Colcord then comments: "I have found since found a references to a raid on the Chesapeake region by a privateer squadron under Admiral Collier during the War of 1812, which did sever damage to tidewater plantations and coastal shipping. One of the British vessesl was the _Dunmore_. The discovery adds on to the probability that this was a genuine contemporary ballad based on fact." Colcord also states: "This song probably dates from somewhere between the years 1819 and 1825, when the West Indies were finally cleared of pirates by the joint efforts of the United States and several of the European naval powers."

There is a degree of verisimilitude here, but a number of problems remain. The name of the ship is so consistently the _Flying Cloud_ that it is hard to believe that this replaced an earlier name when the reputation of the historical clipper _The Flying Cloud_ made the name synonymous with speed under sail. It is possible that an earlier ship of the same name left no record other than the ballad, but this does not seem a likely hypothesis for the nineteenth century.

Another issue is the narrator's original port of destination. It is Valparaiso in the versions of Captain Archie Spurling--see Fannie Hardy Eckstrom and Mary Winslow Smyth, _Minstrelsy of Maine: Folk-Songs and Ballads of the Woods and Coasts (Boston: Houghton Mifflen Company, 1927), p. 214--; of Harry Sutherland--see W. Roy Mackenzie, _Ballads and Sea Songs from Nova Scotia (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1928), p. 283--; of Captain Henry Burke--see William Main Doerflinger, _Shantymen and Shantyboys: Songs of the Sailor and Lumberman_ (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1951), p. 136--; of Howard Morry--see Kenneth Peacock, _Songs of the Newfoundland Outports__, National Museum of Canada, Bulletin No. 197, Anthropoligical Series No. 65 (Ottawa: National Museum of Canada, 1965), Vol. 3, p. 843--; of Richard Hartlan--see Helen Creighton, _Songs and Ballads from Nova Scotia__ (New York: Dover Publications, 1966; this is a photo-reprint of the first edn, Toronto: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1932), p. 127; of Yankee John Galusha--see Anne Warner, _American Folk Songs from the Collection of Anne & Frank Warner_, Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1984), p. 48; and of Clifford Wedge--see Edward D. "Sandy" Ives, _Drive Dull Care Away: Folksongs from Prince Edward Island_ (Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island: Institute of Island Studies, 1999.

An impressive list. And the "Bellfrazer" or various other spellings of the same name sung by anonymous--see Michael Cassius Dean, _Flying Cloud: And One Hundred and Fifty other Old Time Songs and Ballads of Outdoor Men, Sailors, Lumber Jacks, Soldiers, Men of the Great Lakes, Railroadmen, Miners, etc._ (Virginia, Minnesota: The Quickprint, 1922; reprint edn, Norwood, Pennsylvania: Norwood Editions, 1973), p. 1; unspecified (the James Ewing who supplied an unpublished tune? an unidentified broadside?)--see Gavin Greig, _Folk-Song of the North-East_ (Hatboro, Pennsylvania: Folklore Associates, 1963), CXVIII--; and A. F. Nelson--see H. M. Belden, _Ballads and Songs Collected by the Missouri Folk-Lore Society_; _The University of Missouri Studies: A Quarterly of Research_, Vol. 15, No. 1 (1940), p. 129; sounds like a garbled version of "Valparaison." Otherwise the destined port is Bermuda in the versions some Boston newspaper of 1916 --see Roland Palmer Gray, _Songs and Ballads of the Maine Lumberjacks with Other Songs of Maine_ (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1924; photo-reprint edn, Detroit: Singing Tower Press, 1969), p. 117--; anonymous--see Charles J. Finger, _Frontier Ballads Heard and Gathered (Garden City, New York: Doubleday Page & Company, 1927), p. 84--; and anonymous again--see Stan Hugill, _Shanties and Sailors' Songs_ (London: H. Jenkins, and New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1969), p. 226. It is Baltimore in the version of Stephen White--see Elisabeth Bristol Greenleaf and Grace Yarrow Mansfield, __Ballads and Sea Songs of Newfoundland__ (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1933), p.349, but this is probably the result of contamination from the F.C.'s home port, Baltimore in this and most versions. In Welcome Tilton's version--see
Gale Huntington, "Folksongs from Martha's Vinyard," _Northeast Folklore_ 8 (1966): 36--the narrator stays at home in Waterford and meets the ill-fated Moore there.

Well, Valparaison clearly wins in a democratic vote, but it makes little sense to me; why would the narrator go there, and why would Captain Moore leave from there to go slaving to Africa (especially if the trip took ten days or three weeks, which even for the Flying Cloud defies credulity)? Bermuda is more likely; but my preference goes to the once-reported "Beleeza" = Belize of Archie Lant--see Doerflinger, _Shanty Men and Shanty Boys_, p. 139.

The captain who leads the narrator to his downfall is Moore in just about all versions, and William Moore if he has a Christian name. I suggest that this is a reminiscence of the historical William Moore, the rebellious mate killed by Captain Kidd, who was later hanged for the deed, although if a respectable captain had done it it would certainly have been written of as justifiable homicide. Moore is mentioned in the Captain Kidd good-night ballad (is this why Kidd, William in history, is always renamed Robert in the song? Perhaps someone in the early history of the transmission felt that two Williams, one the slayer and the other the victim, were too many for one song and rebaptized the captain).

As for the very reasonable question of how come, if the F.C. was so blooming fast, the nemesis ship, whatever her name, caught her, there is an answer in several versions: "a chain shot took our mizzenmast, of course we fell behind" (Creighton, _Songs & Ballads from Nova Scotia_, p. 129), et al. The other ship surprised the F.C within range of cannon (come on, you've seen "Master and Commander"--these things happen!); the F.C. ran before the wind and would have escaped, but a lucky shot from a chaser on the pursuer's fo'c'sle destroyed the mizzen rigging and probable fouled the mainmast's canvas too.

And I cannot agree that the narrator justified the slaving voyage and was remorseful only about the subsequent piracy. In several versions he expresses real compassion for the slaves and regrets the horrible injustice commited against them. I expect that this subplot, which as someone has already noted is not essential to the main plot, survivied in the song because of anti-slavery sentiment. The song never spread in the Confederacy; the version in the Missouri collection is really from Wisconsin.

It did spread inland. Probably originating in Ireland, it became a favorite in New England and the Canadian Atlantic coast among seafarers. But since sailing was much curtailed in winter months, many sailors worked in the woods during that slack season, and it became even more of a favorite among loggers. That's how it got to Wisconsin and how it bacame one of Finger's Frontier Ballads. Horace Beck tells us--_Folklore and the Sea_ Middletown, Connecticut: Published for the Marine Historical Association by Wesleyan University Press, 1973; reprint edn, Edison, New Jersey: Castle Books, 1999), p. 165--". . . we are told that when times were hard and jobs were few in Michigan, no man would be hired to work in a lumber camp without being able to sing all of 'The Flying Cloud'."

I still have some reading to do on this, but if anyone cares to resume conversation in this thread, it might be fun.

Stephen