Aboard the Henry Clay

DESCRIPTION: Capstan shanty. Verses tell of a "lime-juice jay" that got drunk and went into a fit. The mate kicks him off the boat and he drowns. Later the mate is found with a knife in his back. Refrains repeat last lines of verses.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1910 (Lubbock, Deep Sea Warrior)
KEYWORDS: shanty sailor homicide drink
FOUND IN: US
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Harlow-ChantyingAboardAmericanShips, pp. 207-208, "Aboard the Henry Clay" (1 text, 1 tune)
ADDITIONAL: Basil Lubbock, _Deep Sea Warriors_, (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1910, available on Google Books), pp. 246-247, "Aboard the Henry Clay" (1 text)
Roud #9160
NOTES [152 words]: It isn't clear whether this book is a memoir or fiction (but Wikipedia says the author "is not regarded as a completely reliable source as a historian"), so it isn't clear whether this "chantey" was collected or completely made up by him. In any case, it says two of the verses were improvised by characters in the story --- and these are the same verses that Harlow omitted in Chanteying Aboard American Ships. - JD
Lubbock would later write a history, The Arctic Whalers(Brown, Son, & Ferguson, 1937) which I've cited occasionally in the index, but which didn't impress me as being particularly careful. On the other hand, Harlow claimed to have collected a tune for this, which he cannot have had from Lubbock, so maybe that's some evidence that it's traditional.
I haven't encountered a story of a ship called the Henry Clay on which something like this happened, but that's not proof of anything. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.4
File: Harl207

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