Whether sailor or not, for a moment avast, Poor Jack's mizen top-sail is laid to the mast, He'll never turn out, or will more heave the lead, He's now all aback, nor will sails shoot ahead, Yet though worms knaw his timbers, his vessel a wreck, When he hears the last whistle, he'll jump upon deck,
Secure in his cabin, he's moored in the grave, Nor hears any more the loud roar of the wave, Pressed by death, he is sent to the tender below Where lubbers and seamen must every one go. Yet tho' worms knaw his timbers, his vessel a wreck, When he hears the last whistle he'll jump upon deck.
With his frame a mere hulk, and his reckoning aboard, At last he dropped down to mortality's road With eternity's ocean before him in view, He cheerfully piped out my messmates adieu, For though worms knaw my timber, my vessel a wreck, When I hear the last whistle, I'll jump upon deck.
Bodleian Collection, Firth c13(105), E. Hodges (late Pitts), printer, Seven Dials (London). Circa 1846-1854. Bodley Search
Charles Dibdin wrote poems of this type, but no author is listed with this sheet. Does anyone have further information?
In the poem, a sailor's bones are called timbers. The first known occurrence of the term "shiver my timbers" is in a novel by Marryat, "Jacob Faithful," 1835. Also used by Robert Louis Stevenson in "Treasure Island." See thread 20925: Shiver my timbers 'Shiver my timbers' may have been invented by Marryat, but there is no proof that it was not in prior use by sailors.