Steve, I have so much material on this "Ratcliffe Highway" song family that I can't find time to deal with it.

The type, "sex as naval battle," is traceable straight back to the sixteenth or seventeenth century, but the modern "Yarmouth/Ratcliffe Highway/ Blow the Man Down" branch seems to be from the early to mid nineteenth.

The riggin' rattlin' is also in a fragmentary version sent to Gordon about 1924 from R. M. Davids (one of Colcord's sources).

And it's a "Derry Down" version too:

                              DOWN DERRY DOWN

As Jackie was walking the streets upon Down
He spied pretty Peggy of fair London town,
He spoke her in English, the signal she knew,
And she backed her main yard and she let him come to.
Singing down, down, derry down,
And she rattled his rigging right down to the rail.

She burnt poor Jack's rigging right down to the hull
So off to the doctors, poor Jack he did skull,
His yards were well braced and his blocks were well hung
Saying doctor, dear doctor, my main yard is sprung.


The standard folkie version was apparently introduced by Cyril Tawney. In response to my inquiry years back, Cyril kindly wrote that his version was precisely one collected in Orkney by Patrick Suldham-Shaw (I think in the late '30s or '40s).

It's too bad that it now goes by the title "The Fire Ship," which is better reserved for an entirely different, apparently late nineteenth century song on the same theme. Even Hugill chose the "Fire Ship" title when he recorded his (conflated?) version on "Sailing Days."

Thanks again for the broadside texts you sent me a few years ago!