Digby Neck, the ship Rambolee, and Maritime Songs

THE SHIP RAMBOLEE (Doerflinger)
From: GUEST,Bob Coltman
Date: 08 Feb 10 - 05:31 PM

Jim,

I've answered you by email, but thought I'd supply the text here for any others who are looking for the song. It's in Doerflinger's Songs of the Sailor and Lumberman. Milt Okun recorded it for Stinson back in the 1950s.

Doerflinger tells how he found it in an article by Dan Milner, "William Main Doerflinger, Dean of Maritime Music Scholars," at

http://pages.prodigy.net/folkmusic/wmdoerflinger.htm

"Bill raised enough money to stay on in Nova Scotia in hopes of collecting maritime songs. Much later, he admitted to his son, Tom Doerflinger, that he was at first very apprehensive about approaching total strangers to ask whether they knew any old fishing songs. His fears were soon dispelled. Setting out by bus down Digby Neck on his first day of collecting, he mentioned his purpose to the driver, Guy Morehouse. "Oh, like this?" said Mr. Morehouse, whose father had been a sea captain, and he promptly sang "The Ship Rambolee," about the shipwreck of the H.M.S. Ramillies off the coast of Devon, England in 1760. Bill never looked back after that encounter and the 60 or so songs that he collected on that first trip formed the basis of his Princeton thesis and would become the nucleus of his brilliant book on the folk songs of the American Northeast and Canadian Maritimes."

The song itself isn't quoted there, but here it is, from Doerflinger's book 144-. Bob

THE SHIP RAMBOLEE

It happened on a certain day,
The Ship Rambolee at her anchor lay,
That very night a storm came on,
And the ship Rambolee from her anchor did run.

CHO: So come all you girls, you girls that I adore,
Pray for the sailors that are on the lee shore.

Now, the boats we in so nimbly did toss,
Some jumped in, while others were lost,
Some in one boat and some in another,
While the watch down below, boys, they did smother.

Weep, pretty maidens, weep with me,
Weep for the sailors that were on the Rambolee,
Only three remains to tell the tale
How the ship behaved in that dreadful gale.


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Subject: Lyr Add: THE LOSS OF THE RAMILLIES
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Feb 10 - 07:52 PM

This is how it was sung in Norfolk - never came across a chorus before.

THE LOSS OF THE RAMILLIES
From the singing of Walter Pardon

It was on one day, one certain day
The Ramillies at her anchor lay,
That very night a gale came on
And our ship from its anchorage away did run

The rain poured down in terrible drops,
The seas broke over our foretop,
With our yards and canvas neatly spread
We were thinking to weather at Rames Head

Our bosun cried, my hearties all,
Listen unto me while I blow the call,
So launch your boats, your lives to save,
Or the seas this night will be your grave.

Then overboard our boats we tossed,
So may got in that lives were lost,
Some were in one boat, some were in another
And the watch below, they were all smothered.

And when the sad, sad news to Plymouth came
That the Ramillies was lost with most of her men,
Only two are left that can tell the tale
Who were lost that night in that terrible gale.

Come all you pretty fair maids and weep with me,
Who have lost your sweethearts on the Ramillies,
All Plymouth town was swum with tears
At the hearing of such sad affairs.

The HMS Ramillies was wrecked at Bolt Head near Plymouth on 15 February 1760. Of her crew of around 850 men, all were lost except for twenty seamen and one midshipman.

Jim Carroll