Let's All Go Down the Strand!

DESCRIPTION: "One night a half 'a dozen tourists Spent the night together in Trafalgar Square"; they were planning to go to Germany, but are advised against it, so they all go down to the Strand to see what they can find
AUTHOR: Clarence Wainwright Murphy (1875–1913) and Harry Castling (1865–1933) (source: Pegler-SoldiersSongsAndSlangoftheGreatWar)
EARLIEST DATE: 1909 (Pegler-SoldiersSongsAndSlangoftheGreatWar)
KEYWORDS: travel
FOUND IN: Britain(England)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Pegler-SoldiersSongsAndSlangoftheGreatWar, pp. 224-226, "Let's All Go Down the Strand" (1 text)
LibraryThingCampSongsThread, posts 78, 80, "(Let's all go down the strand)" (2 excerpts which together make up most of the song, from user John5918, posted September 19, 2021)
ST LTCSLAGS (Partial)
Roud #V31313
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Nimrod's Song" (subject of Ernest Shackleton)
NOTES [2767 words]: Popularized by Stanley Holloway. The phrase "have a banana," now universally heard as part of the song, was apparently an insertion by enthusiastic crowds, and the phrase has taken on a life of its own. So this song may not be traditional, but it has given us a traditional tag line.
Pegler's third verse refers to "Shackleton." This is Ernest Shackleton (1874-1922), the Antarctic explorer. These days, Shackleton is best remembered for the 1914 Endurance expedition, in which the ship was lost but everyone saved. However, since the song is from 1909, it can hardly be about a 1914 expedition!
Shackleton was born in Ireland in 1874; he went to sea aboard the Hoghton Tower in 1890 (Riffenburgh, p. 31). She came close to sinking in a storm -- one of the ships that sailed with her did go down (Riffenburgh, p. 33), but it gave him experience he needed; in October 1894, he was able to pass the examination for Second Mate (Riffenburgh, p. 34). That was important, because it meant that he could command a watch on shipboard, which could give him a role as a ship's officer on an exploratory voyage. (He wasn't a scientist, so that was the only way he would find a job!) A couple of years later, he earned his first mate's certificate. In 1897, he met Emily Dornan, a woman six years older than he was, who nonetheless became his wife (Riffenburgh, p. 37).
At about this time, he also made a sort of career shift. His early service had been in cargo vessels. About the time of the Boer War, he became an officer on a liner (Riffenburgh, p. 43) -- which for the first time let him use his natural charm to get to know influential people. Or, in one case, an influential person's son. Cedric Longstaff was a junior officer on his way to South Africa, and his father was Llewellyn Longstaff, who contributed £25,000 to Britain's Antarctic expedition (Riffenburgh, p. 59).
By the time of Shackleton's birth, it had been a third of a century since a British ship had done any Antarctic exploration or science work, and it wasn't until 1899 that the British went back, with a small expedition wintering on the Antarctic Peninsula (Larson, pp. 46-47). Many people wanted more -- in particular, those who wanted to understand terrestrial magnetism wanted more data about the magnetic field in the far south. This was Scott's 1902 Discovery voyage -- a curious expedition commanded by a naval officer (Robert Scott) but partly funded by public contributions and with many civilian participants. The whole thing was afflicted by confusion of priorities. The Royal Geographic Society (RGS) wanted to explore (including reaching the South Pole if possible); the Royal Society wanted to study magnetism. it was Clements Markham of the RGS who picked out Scott as the commander, even though he had no particular qualifications except having the sort of flair that appealed to Markham (Riffenburgh, p. 57).
In an ordinary military expedition, Scott would have had control of his officers, and Shackleton probably would not have been chosen. But the organizers wanted to make Llewellyn Longstaff happy, and Longstaff wanted Shackleton. Scott's #2 interviewed Shackleton and found him competent, so Shackleton became a junior officer on Discovery (Riffenburgh, p. 59).
It was perhaps not an ideal choice; "Chafing under naval discipline, [Shackleton] would become the only officer to threaten Scott's authority" (Larson, p. 47).
A lot of things went wrong with the expedition from the start. Rather than simply buy up a whaler, the British government custom-built the Discovery,. The building of this ship was indicative of the planning for the whole expedition. According to Paine, p. 145, the new Discovery was based on an earlier Discovery, the former S. S. Bloodhound, the second Newfoundland sealer of that name. That ship had been purchased for the 1875-1876 Arctic expedition lead by George Nares.
But the Nares expedition was a scurvy-racked disaster, and the Discovery eventually went back to Newfoundland and became a thoroughly undistinguished sealer again. (She had had one very good year in her first year in the ice, but never matched it again.) There were much better arctic steamers available -- the obvious choice would have been the Terra Nova, the "model mailboat" of "The Old Polina," a ten-years-newer design which in fact was the ship Scott used for his 1912 expedition! Indeed, when Scott's expedition got stuck in the ice, the Terra Nova was purchased to lead the rescue (Riffenburgh, p. 92). But somebody had noticed that the Bloodhound / Discovery had been to the Arctic, and so assumed it was a good design, and copied it. Shackleton, the sailing expert among her officers, found that she "steered badly, there being too much sail after, and not enough forward" (Riffenburgh, p. 63. Just looking at her photograph, it appears her mainmast is too far back in the hull!). She also burned far too much coal, and she leaked like a sieve and ruined vast quantities of stores as a result (Larson, p. 48; Riffenburgh, p. 263). Shackleton was responsible for cleaning up the mess as well as trying to keep the ship in working order; in this he succeeded, at least to a degree, else the ship would never have made it to Antarctica.
This was the first of three times Shackleton went to the Antarctic, He, along with Scott and their close friend Dr. Edward Wilson, was one of three men who tried and failed to make the South Pole that year. It was not a very well-done trip: "Scott, the surgeon Wilson, and Shackleton, who was the third officer of the expedition ship Discovery, suffered from inexperience in numerous aspects of polar travel" (Riffenburgh, p. 6). At one point Scott even lost his mathematical tables, so he couldn't navigate! (Larson, pp. 78-79). They didn't know how to handle the dogs (that was Shackleton's job, and he had no one to train them); they didn't know how to handle the sledges; their preparations were bad. They made it only to 82°17' south, or about halfway from the coast to the South Pole, reaching their furthest south on December 31, 1902 (Larson, p. 4). All of them were sick, but Shackleton was the first of the three to show signs of scurvy (Riffenburgh, p. 9), and was clearly the sickest (Riffenburgh, p. 10-11; p. 13 describes severe breathing problems and fatigue), so Scott would eventually accuse him -- probably correctly, since he was for some time too weak to draw the sledge -- of slowing the expedition down. But it was clear they would never have made the pole anyway.
Scott called Shackleton an "invalid," and, when the Discovery became trapped in the ice, sent him home on the supply boat even though most of the expedition stayed in Antarctica for another year (Larson, p. 87; Riffenburgh, p. 87). The two probably just weren't compatible -- Scott was too much of a plan-everything-in-advance type, while Shackleton flew by the seat of his pants (Riffenburgh, pp. 85-86).
It wasn't all bad news for Shackleton, to be sure. "[U]pon reaching London in June 1903, as the only man available of the three who had come so close to the Pole, he was lionized" (FitzSimons, p. 37). So it's possible that this song could refer to the 1903-1904 period. It's not a good fit for when the song was published, though.
In one of life's little ironies, Shackleton was offered a command in the mission set up to rescue Scott. But he turned it down so that he could marry Emily (Riffenburgh, p. 93). That left him at loose ends; he filled his time by running unsuccessfully for Parliament, coming in fourth in a two-seat constituency in the election of 1906 (Riffenburgh, pp. 97-101) and also trying some commercial ventures. None of it came to anything -- and he ended up very bored. In any case, Scott's charges were not something Shackleton could accept lightly, so he set out on his own to try again.
Unfortunately, Shackleton didn't have much experience in organization, and thought he could mount an expedition for the absurdly low cost of £17,000 (Riffenburgh, p. 103). This left him forever trying to do things on the cheap. When he found, for instance, that he couldn't afford to build a ship, he had to buy one -- and the only one he could afford was the broken-down Nimrod The Nimrod wasn't much of a ship, even during her years as a sealer in Newfoundland. You can find out some of her history in "The Nimrod's Song," but even the histories of Newfoundland sealers don't pay her much heed. Her one big moment was as Shackleton's ship. But her limits constrained him; she was so small that much had to be left behind, and she couldn't even carry enough coal to take her to Antarctica and back! (Riffenburgh, pp. 144-145, says she had to be towed much of the way south, and even so, her Plimsoll line was two feet under water; she had just three and a half feet of freeboard; it's a near-miracle she didn't sink. The pumps had to be manned, and two ponies were lost; Riffenburgh, pp. 146-147). (As it was, with all is economizing, he came home with debts on the order of £20,000 pounds; FitzSimons, p. 101. He took on at least one of his crew members just because he was willing to contribute a couple of thousand pounds; Riffenburgh, pp. 130-131). Nonetheless, the goals were lofty; Shackleton "wanted his mission to bezt Scott's in every respect, including science" (Larson, p. 193).
The Nimrod expedition, Shackleton's second trip to the Antarctic (and the first in which he was in charge) took place in 1907-1909; the Nimrod set sail from England on August 7, 1907 (Riffenburgh, p. 132). It is the most likely subject of the verse in this song.
Scott, who wanted to go to the Antarctic again, was not thrilled when Shackleton, as he thought, moved in on his turf. (Riffenburgh, pp. 111-113. Scott couldn't mount another expedition at once; he had to perform regular Navy duties. Shackleton, being a free agent rather than a member of the military, merely had to find someone to pay him.) Scott objected, and that did cause Shackleton to change his intended landing point slightly, but that was it (FitzSimons, pp. 44-46. As it turned out, conditions forced Shackleton right back to where Scott had landed -- FitzSimons, pp. 65-66; lucky for him Scott was still in England!).
Scott's expedition had done everything by the book; Shackleton was willing to experiment. Having had a bad experience with dogs, he took only nine -- but he also carried eight Manchurian ponies and an experimental motor vehicle (FitzSimons, p. 69; Riffenburgh, p. 120, says he ordered fifteen ponies but only eight actually made it to Antarctica).
Shackleton was generally more outgoing than Scott, but that doesn't mean he always got along with people; in addition to his quarrel with Scott, the surgeon on the Nimrod expedition, Dr. Eric Marshall, despised him (Riffenburgh, pp. 171-172 and elsewhere), and when he sent the Nimrod north during the first winter of the expedition, he sent a secret instruction to his agents to remove her captain, Rupert England (FitzSimons, pp. 79-80), resulting in a major newspaper controversy (Riffenburgh, p. 185).
Still, Shackleton's second trip managed several things that had never been done before. A party visited the South Magnetic Pole -- although they traveled so slowly that they had no time to take data there, or even to verify that they had reached the exact spot, and they barely made it back alive (Larson, pp. 57-58. The magnetic poles wander; the south magnetic pole has since gone out to sea. The pole was actually moving when they got there, so they were certainly in the vicinity; Riffenburgh, p. 244). Another party climbed Mount Erebus, the southernmost known active volcano, in March 1908 (Larson, pp. 126-127). Shackleton wasn't particularly interested in science, but "in [Edgeworth] David, [Douglas] Mawson, [Raymond] Priestley, and James Murray, Shackleton attracted an abler team of scientists [than Scott]" (Larson, p. 294); the geological work they did was truly important.
Shackleton himself, meanwhile, made a run for the South Pole itself. His group did far better than Scott had done, making it somewhat south of 88° (they claimed 88° 23', but because their instruments were all either damaged or left behind, this figure is imprecise (Larson, p. 90. Riffenburgh, p. 294, describes a controversu about the point, but all the observers were competent and felt the figure was about right. Iit is clear that they had outdistanced Scott by 400+ miles). They also came closer to the South Pole than Robert Peary had made it to the north pole on what was then his most recent expedition; thus, the Shackleton party came closer to *a* pole than anyone had ever done to that time (Riffenburgh, p. 128. Shackleton took this as a consolation: "Whatever regrets may be we have done our best. Beat the South Record by 366 miles the North by 77 miles"; Riffenburgh, p. 232), This even though every pony they took with them died, often pathetically; even I, no fan of horselike creatures, found the death of their last pony, Socks, tragic (the animal fell down an invisible crevasse, and never even let out a sound as it fell and could not be seen; Riffenburgh, pp. 221-222. The party could "only hope" it broke its neck rather than suffering a slow death). Given that their single biggest problem was breathing the thin cold air of the Antarctic Plateau, I can't help but wonder if they would have made the pole had not Shackleton and Co. been non-smokers instead of a bunch of tobacco addicts.
Shackleton didn't achieve the pole, and several of the other expeditions came close to disaster, but no one was actually killed (Larson, p. 232), a feat Scott would never match. (Although it should be noted that both Shackleton's trip south and the trip to the magnetic pole came within a hair of disaster; at one point on Shackleton's return mission, he and two of the three others were incapable of walking; only one man was able to reach the depot with their supplies; Riffenburgh, p. 255. On four different occasions, they reached a depot without sufficient food for even one more meal; Riffenburgh 259. Everyone survived, but I feel as if they deserved to fail; they had cut things too fine for safety.)
Many members of the shore party were still weak when the expedition finished, but on March 9, 1909, the Nimrod turned north -- just barely in time; the ice was already forming around them (Riffenburgh, p. 278). The ship itself did some mapping on the way home -- mostly demonstrating that a number of islands earlier explorers had claimed to sight did not exist -- but Shackleton had taken a faster ship back to Europe (Riffenburgh, ppl 284-285).
The song is right to say "great crowds" welcomed Shackleton home. He had made arrangements for stories to go out across the globe before he returned to Britain, giving exclusives, e.g., to the Daily Mail (Riffenburgh, p.280). Despite his failure to make the Pole, Shackleton was given a hero's welcome on his return. A crowd of more than 500 greeted him at Charing Cross Station on his return, and he addressed a packed house at Royal Albert Hall (Larson, p. 165). King Edward VII knighted him (Larson, p. 91; Riffenburgh, p. 295). Little wonder that he was the talk of London at the time! He "overnight became the darling of the London social set" (Riffenburgh, p. 287), and crowds really did follow him most places. "When Shackleton walked off the Nimrod, he stepped immediately into a role of imperial hero, and immediately became the centre of a storm of patriotic fervour and public adoration" (Riffenburgh, p. 280) -- though much of his attention had to go to trying to pay off the immense debts of his expedition; even a £20,000 grant from the government didn't fully pay it off (Riffenburgh, pp. 290-291),
Of course, Shackleton's 1909 return didn't end Antarctic exploration. Scott died in 1912 on his way back from his run to the South Pole. Shackleton himself made another expedition in 1914, with the goal of crossing Antarctica (as opposed to starting at one point, going south, and returning to the starting point) -- but his ship Endurance was trapped and eventually lost, though Shackleton managed to bring his people home. But they came back during World War I. That, plus Scott's loss and Shackleton's failure to actually perform any sort of mission, quieted zeal for Antarctica for a long time. Shackleton himself was putting together another expedition when he died of heart disease in 1922 (Riffenburgh, p. 302). For the story of a World War II military expedition, see "The Ice-Floes." - RBW
Bibliography Last updated in version 7.1
File: LTCSLAGS

Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List

Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography

The Ballad Index Copyright 2025 by Robert B. Waltz and David G. Engle.