The "Cruel Captin" at Bodley doesn't display (click) (at least not today), but it begins, "Come all you noble bold commanders."

I fount three CD recordings of "Cruel Ship's Captain." The one on the A.L. Lloyd Leviathan! CD is misidentified on the CD packaging as Cruel Ship's Carpenter which is an entirely different song. This recording doesn't show up on many indexes, and it's a shame because it is a better-sounding recording than the other A.L. Lloyd cut, on Highpoint's Sailors' Songs and Sea Shanties compilation (dates of thse two A.L. Lloyd cuts are not shown). Here are the notes from the Highpoint recording:

The Cruel Ship's Captain: Nearly two centuries ago, a whaling skipper of King's Lynn on the Norfolk coast was hanged for the brutal murder of an apprentice. Street singers had a long-winded ballad purporting to be his dying confession. In the foc'sles of the Greenland ships, the whalermen whittled away all the inessentials, and what remained was one of the briefest and most ferocious of all sea-songs.

The third recording comes from an unexpected source, a CD called Inside Dave Van Ronk a 1989 Fantasy resissue of recordings made by Van Ronk in 1962. Van Ronk's interpreation of the song is a powerful one.
None of these three recordings has the fourth verse that is shown in the Digital Tradition. Anybody know of other sources for this song?
-Joe Offer-

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In the Digital Tradition, this song is linked with Andrew Ross/Andrew Rose, another song about abused sailors.