A Sailor's Songbag: An American Rebel In An English Prison, 1777-1779

Timothy Connor and his mates, some seventy thousand Yankee privateers, leveled a remarkable weight of destruction on British shipping during the American Revolution. Unlike the enfeebled Continental Navy, these common seamen were, in Thomas Jefferson's words, 'a national blessing.' Connor's ship, the Rising States, was eventually captured at sea by the British H.M.S. Terrible in April 1777. Transported to Forton Prison, Portsmouth, Connor remained a 'darn'd Rebel' prisoner for two years. During that time he kept a book of some fifty-six songs he heard or read. When this manuscript was discovered in 1893, it was dismissed as a collection of 'coarse sailor songs'. Coarse, they were certainly, privateers being a rough lot. 'Rascally,' said George Washington; 'I do believe there is not on earth a more disorderly set.' Now published here for the first time, the songs are a vivid expression of the vernacular tastes of the times and of the common sailor's feelings about love and war, sex and the sea. Blunt (often obscene) in diction and straightforward in narration and sentiment, they provide a keen and honest index to the feelings, ideas, and attitudes captured in and fostered by popular songs of the late eighteenth century. The songbook has been carefully edited with notes for each song and an extended introduction on privateering and prison life as experienced 'from the bottom up' by an American rebel.