SECTION 7: Maritime - Ships
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This song was sung to John Meredith by Mary Byrnes of Concord ... and she learned it, as a young girl, on the family farm at Springside (near Orange) - probably from the singing of casual farmhands. (Folk Songs of Australia and the men and women who sang them - volume 1
The Wreck of the Dandenong
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On Board Of The 'Wolverine'
SYDNEY PUNCH
Dec. 16th. 1882
Tune: On Board of the Kangaroo
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The Mornington Penninsula is on the Victorian South coast and, during the nineteen and early twentieth century, a bust port for steam ships. The waters are quite dangerous and several ships were wrecked. This song, an appeal for financial support for the families, is typical as it recounts the horror and ends with the appeal. Compare it with P F Collin's 'Eldorado Mining Disaster' or The Sunshine Railway Disaster'
The Mornington Boating Disaster
Tune: Balaclava
Australian Melodist No 20
Mitchell library 784.8/A
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The Winefred Marvel
Life on the emigrant ship 'Winefred'.
12 numbers of the ship's newspaper on the London to Brisbane run in 1875
Entry that Mr Buckingham sang a song including the verse:
To Queensland
Good friends, adieu! I'm shortly sailing
To Queensland over the trackless sea
And when I'm far from home and kindred
I pray you all remember me.
I Wish I Was In Queensland
Tune: Dixie's Land
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The Good Ship Winefred
Tune: I Will Stand By My Friend
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The Lolita
From Australia Under Siege by Stephen Carruthers and quoting Warrant Officer Anderson of the Lolita
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A Narrative on the Melancholy Wreck of the Dunbar
DSM/910.41/D
1857
Booklet with first hand accounts of the tragedy and a narrative poem prefaced with:
Warning not heard or seen – no help at hand –
The wide dark bosom of the angry deep
With irresistible and cruel force
Received them all. One only cast alive,
Fainting and breathless on the fatal rocks –
To weeping friends and strangers afterwards
Thus told his melancholy tale –
Riverboat ditty
From Charles Shaw 1956 and concerns a boat called The Struggler/ ML
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The Lammermuir
Tune: Marching through Georgia
First verse only.
The Lammermuir left London boys
A fortnight's start she got
But the Orient overhauled her
Before half way she'd got
As we were sailing to Australia
In 1873 the Orient was about to leave London for Adelaide when the owner of the Lammermuir (John Wills) acme on board with the story that his carpenter had left his toolbox. A five-pound bet was made between he and the captain Mitchell that he couldn't catch her and give the box over before the Line was crossed. The Lammermuir had sailed ten days earlier however the Orient did catch her up. The crew of the Orient composed this pumping shanty. Taken from The Colonial Clippers Basil Lubbock pub 1948 in Melbourne.
Riverboat Oscar
Quoted by Ian Moodie and anon ditty from the Oscar which worked the rivers near Echuca and Wakool
There was gunboat Smith and skipper Hayes and the cook and the engineer
All standing out on the afterdeck drinking some bottles of beer
While the rest of the crew all looking blue and feeling pretty crook
Were passing the wood as fast as they could and longing for Koondrook
Sabraon
From the sight of dirty gutters, from a town without a drain,
From the shores of Australasia to our own old land again
In the clipper ship 'Sabraon' we are bound across the main
To London!
Another remembered song was this version of the shanty
Wreck of the Steam Ship London
J M FORDE CORRESPONDENCE FILES - MSQ377.381
Dated circa 1900
Sent in by a contributor (handwritten) to 'Old Chum' column in Truth
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The Bundaberg
Aust Post 1956 The Bundaberg sailed the Murray River as a paddleboat early 1900
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I have not seen this broadside in other collections. It appears to be a fanciful piece with extraordinary evil deeds committed by the Aboriginals who attacked the shipwrecked crew.
Wreck of the Stirling Castle
Broadside
Catnach Publisher. 1837. Mitchell.
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The Blackball line ships travelled to most Australian ports. They had a well-earned reputation for speed.
The Blackball Line
Morn Of Youth
Robert S Close
1949
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This ballad shares a page with 'Jack and the Deck Of Cards'on a Broadside published by Nugent's of Dublin. The 'John Tayleur' sank off the Isle of Lembay, Ireland, on her passage from Liverpool to Melbourne.
The Wreck Of The John Tayleur
not dated
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The following item is an extraordinary lesson in how ballads travel. This appears to be a combination of a British poaching/transportation ballad and a local incident. I clipped this from the Sydney sun Herald in 1964. The recording of Mr Jim Davis is in the National Library Oral History & Folklore Collection.
Refer to the original newspaper article. The ballad is related to early poaching songs and then goes into a local incident – fascinating. I am not sure what the singer is referring to in 'Valgate Mac' maybe Newgate Gaol.
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