happy? - Oct 6 ('Dreadnought' launched)

Subject: RE: happy? - Oct 6 ('Dreadnought' launched)
From: FreddyHeadey
Date: 09 Feb 17 - 05:46 PM

Ewan MacColl
https://youtu.be/M__xcCbmPqs

Subject: RE: happy? - Oct 6 ('Dreadnought' launched)
From: GUEST,Z
Date: 19 Apr 11 - 09:35 AM

Anywhere online (or ANYWHERE?!) I can find a recording of this song? Barbara Dickson or another?

Subject: RE: happy? - Oct 6 ('Dreadnought' launched)
From: Wolfgang
Date: 09 Oct 05 - 04:45 PM

The battleship:

Launched Feb 06 according to this site

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: happy? - Oct 6 ('Dreadnought' launched)
From: Scotus
Date: 07 Oct 05 - 10:12 PM

Abby,

Back when I used to sing with Barbara (Dickson - of that ilk!) when we were all very very young, that was one of our BIG songs. In fact it was one of the first she recorded - on a limited edition LP of a Federation of Scottish Folk Clubs concert at the Pollock Halls in Edinburgh in, I think, 1965. Just before your time there I believe!

Jack

Subject: RE: happy? - Oct 6 ('Dreadnought' launched)
From: GUEST,Joe_F
Date: 07 Oct 05 - 09:06 PM

Abby: Well, maybe the third (Wheat in the Ear, and Skipper Ireson's Ride). It's not a long book, and there's not a dull page in it. A spoiled brat falls overboard from a liner, gets picked up by a schooner out of Gloucester, gets punched in the nose, and grows up fast. Kipling, who was living in Vermont at the time, had done his homework. (The conductor's chant in "How the Whale Got His Throat" is from the trip from Brattleboro to Boston.)

--- Joe Fineman    [e-mail]

||: Be careful what you do with your resentment. :||

Subject: RE: happy? - Oct 6 ('Dreadnought' launched)
From: EBarnacle
Date: 07 Oct 05 - 11:26 AM

Alas, poor Manuel

Subject: RE: happy? - Oct 6 ('Dreadnought' launched)
From: Abby Sale
Date: 06 Oct 05 - 10:56 PM

Walrus: Great! And I'd bet there were some guitarists surprised (disappointed) as well.

Joe: Wonderfull. I'm gonna have to read that book. Never have. I think that's about the 15th important thing you've posted from it over the years. And I still haven't gotten around to it.....

Subject: RE: happy? - Oct 6 ('Dreadnought' launched)
From: GUEST,Joe_F
Date: 06 Oct 05 - 09:20 PM

Kipling has it sung by one of the fishermen in _Captains Courageous_, with fiddle accompaniment:

...Tom Platt launching into almost dolorous tune, like unto the moaning of winds and the creaking of masts. With his eyes fixed on the beams above, Disko began this ancient, ancient ditty [about 30 years old at the time, I guess %^)], Tom Platt flourishing all around him to make the tune and words fit a little:

"There is a crack packet -- crack packet of fame,

She hails from Noo York, an' the _Dreadnought_'s her name,

You may talk o' your fliers -- Swallow-tail and Black Ball --

But the _Dreadnought_'s the packet that can beat them all.

"Now the _Dreadnought_ she lies in the River Mersey,

Because of the tug-boat to take her to sea;

But when she's off soundings you shortly will know

(_Chorus._)

She's the Liverpool packet -- O Lord, let her go!

"Now the _Dreadnought_ she's howlin' crost the Banks o' Newfoundland,

Where the water's all shallow and the bottom's all sand.

Sez all the little fishes that swim to and fro:

(_Chorus._)

`She's the Liverpool packet -- O Lord, let her got!'"

There were scores of verses, for he worked the _Dreadnought_ every mile of the way between Liverpool and New York as conscientiously as though he were on her deck, and the accordion pumped and the fiddle squeaked beside him....

--- Joe Fineman    [e-mail]

||: Whatever you live is life. :||

Subject: RE: happy? - Oct 6 ('Dreadnought' launched)
From: The Walrus
Date: 06 Oct 05 - 05:21 PM

I saw the thread title and thought it referred to HMS Dreadnought, the ship that effectively rendered all other battleships of its day obsolete and re-set the clock on the naval arms race in the years before the Great War, but my copy of Jane's has her dated as Feb 1906.
I'm not sure if that's the launch or commission date.

Walrus

Subject: happy? - Oct 6 ('Dreadnought' launched)
From: Abby Sale
Date: 06 Oct 05 - 09:45 AM

The Dreadnought, a three-masted medium clipper ship of 1414 tons OM and 2337 tons NM, was launched 10/6/1853 and sailed for the New York-based Red Cross Line.

It drifted ashore and wrecked off Tierra del Fuego July 4, 1869. The crew reached Cape San Diego after 17 days in two of the ship's boats. [thanx Lars Bruzelius - Maritime History Virtual Archives Dreadnought]

          It's of a flash packet, a packet of fame,
          She hails from New York and the Dreadnaught's her name.
          'Cross the wild Western ocean, she's bound for to go.
          She's the Liverpool packet. Oh Lord, let her go!
  
                  Derry down, down, down derry down.

Per Hugill, it was the Liverpool packet - ie., an American ship trading with Liverpool, rather than a Liverpool packet, an English ship.    Snapshot of Dreadnought

The song (based on "The Flash Frigate") has two tunes & several choruses, depending on if it were used as a capstan chantey or a forebitter. Like most, I sing the "derry-down" one.

It's a great song but I can't help thinking it was written by the Line's ad-men & spin artists - not by actual sailor's on it. Superb though the ship may have been, the sailors just seem too enthralled with it all. Well, maybe they were proud to serve on a world-class ship but that toast to "bold Captain Samuels and his officers too" may go one step too far. He did earn the reputation of one of the great monsters of the seas.

Copyright © 2005, Abby Sale - all rights reserved
What are Happy's all about? See Notes and Index