Sinking of the Commodore, The

DESCRIPTION: The lookout spots the French Commodore. We sink her and pick up French and Spanish survivors and return them "to tell the proud French Admiral We sank his Commodore."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1859 (source: Frank-JollySailorsBold)
KEYWORDS: battle navy war rescue sea ship wreck patriotic sailor
FOUND IN: US(NE)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Frank-JollySailorsBold 54, "The Sinking of the Commodore" (1 text)
Roud #31335
NOTES [142 words]: Neither in Frank-JollySailorsBold, nor in his source, is there any mention of a specific battle, nor any other hint that "Commodore" was a real warship. (see Charles Henry Robbins, The Gam being a Group of Whaling Stories, rev. ed. (Salem: Newcomb & Gauss, 1913 ("Digitized by Internet Archive")), pp. 189-191). - BS
Nor is the name Commodore one we would expect of a French ship. According to C. T. Onions, editor, with the assistance of G. W. S. Friedrichsen and R. W. Burchfield, The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 195, the English "commodore" probably derives from Dutch (it was used by King William III); the French equivalent is "kommandeur," although Voltaire used the word "commodore." Perhaps the name is a distortion of something else, but without more information, it's hard to know what. - RBW
Last updated in version 7.0
File: FJSB054

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