118 - Alabama II - Pump Shanty


This version of the "Roll, Alabama, Roll", Stan Hugill mention, is the version from William Main Doerflinger's "Shantymen And Shantyboys"(1951), and instead of the halyard shanty this time is sang as pump shanty. Here full version of this song from Doerflinger's book, indexed as The "Alabama (II)", in his book.
"Shanties from the Seven Seas" by Stan Hugill (1st ed p 160).



Alabama II

Oh, in eighteen hundread an' sixty-one,
   - Roll, alabama, roll!
The Alabama's keel was laid,
   - And roll, Alabama, roll!

                *2*
'Twas laid in the yard of Jonathan Laird
At the town of Birkenhead.

                *3*
At first she was called the "Two-Ninety-Two,"
For the merchants of the city of Liverpool

                *4*
Put up the money to build the ship,
In the hopes of driving the commerce from the sea.

                *5*
Down the Mersey she sailed one day
To the port of Fayal in the Western Isles.

                *6*
There she refitted with men and guns,
And sailed across the Western Sea,

                *7*
With orders to sink, burn and destroy
All ships belonging to the North.

                *8*
Till one day in the harbor of Cherbourgh she laid,
And the little Kearsage was waiting there.

                *9*
And the Kersage with Winslow was waiting there,
And Winslow challenged them to fight at sea.

                *10*
Outside the three-mile limit they fought,
Outside the three-mile limit they fought

                *11*
Till a shot from the forward pivot that day
Took the Alabama's steering gear away,

                *12*
And at the kearsage's mercy she lay,
And Semms escaped on a British yacht.