Sinking of the Royal George, The

DESCRIPTION: "Toll for the brave, the brave that are no more. All sunk beneath the wave fast by their native shore." 800 are lost when Kempenfeldt's ship capsized. The singer hopes the ship may float again, but the sailors and their admiral are gone
AUTHOR: Words: William Cowper (1731-1800) (source: Lane/Gosbee-SongsOfShipsAndSailors)
EARLIEST DATE: 1782 (date written, according to various Internet sources)
KEYWORDS: ship wreck disaster death
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
Aug 19, 1782 - Sinking of the Royal George with Admiral Kempenfelt and most of her crew
FOUND IN: US(NE)
REFERENCES (6 citations):
Lane/Gosbee-SongsOfShipsAndSailors, pp. 76-77, "The Sinking of the Royal George" (1 text, 1 tune)
Sidgwick-BalladsPoemsIllustratingEnglishHistory, pp. 155-156, "The Loss of the Royal George" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: William Cowper (William Hayley, editor), _The Life and Letters of William Cowper_, W. Mason (Chichester), 1809 (available on Google Books), pp. 61-61, "Song on the loss of the Royal George" (1 text plus Cowper's Latin version "In submersionem navigii, cui Georgius, regale nomen, inditum")
(no editor listed), _The Penny Magazine of the Society for the Dissemination of Useful Knowldege_, Charles Knight, 1832 (available on Google Books), p. 128, "(no title)" (1 text)
(no editor listed), _The Poetical Remembrancer_, Currier and Hal and Asa McFarland, 1835 (available on Google Books), pp. 194-195, "(no title)" (1 text)
Samuel Maunder, _The Universal Class-Book: a New Series of Reading-lessons ... for Every Day in the Year_ Longman, Brown, Green, and Longman, 1844 (available on Google Books), pp. 330-331, "The Royal George" (1 text)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Royal George (I)" (probable subject)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
Toll for the Brave
On the Loss of the Royal George
NOTES [808 words]: This was published a lot. Granger's Index to Poetry lists it in fourteen modern anthologies, which is a very high total. I've made no attempt whatsoever to list them all; I just listed a handful of the earliest ones found on Google Books.
The notes in Cowper's collected works say, "I add the following Song (adapted to the march in Scippio) for two reasons; because it is pleasing to promote the celebrity of a brave man, calamitously cut off in his career of honor, and because the Song was a favorite production of the poet'; so much so, that he amused himself by translating it into Latin verse. I take the version from one of his subsequent letters, for the sake of annexing it to the original."
It is usually called "The Loss of the Royal George" or "On the Loss of the Royal George," but I've used the title "The Sinking of the Royal George" because that is what is used in Lane/Gosbee-SongsOfShipsAndSailors.
The Royal George, according to Paine, p. 439, had a complicated history. Laid down in 1746 as the Royal Anne, it took ten years to finish her. During that long wait, she was renamed the Royal George (Uden/Cooper, p. 435, point out that there were a lot of ships eventually named Royal George, but George I had ascended in 1727, so the name was still fairly new when this one was built). At a nominal 100 guns and 2047 tons burden, she was the first warship to exceed 2000 tons. She was 178 feet long, had three masts, and had a nominal crew of 850.
She was Admiral Hawke's flagship at the great Battle of Quiberon Bay in 1759 (for background on that, see "Bold Hawke"), but with the end of the Seven Years' War, she was laid up from 1763 to 1778. After that, during the wide-ranging wars surrounding the American Revolution, she was part of a relief expedition for Gibraltar. In 1782, she was at Spithead, preparing for another trip to Gibraltar.
Her ruin came as she was being prepared. Uden/Cooper, p. 435, blame "Admiralty neglect," but there seem to have been three factors to her loss. First, she had been tipped slightly (careened) to allow repairs below the waterline. Second, her lower gunports were not properly secured. And third, she was being loaded with rum for her voyage. Something, somehow, caused her to start to roll -- and the roll didn't stop, and down she went. The loss was estimated at 800, including 300 women and 60 children who were visiting the ship. Ritchie reports that her masts were still above water. He estimates the casualties at 900.
Since she had sunk in harbor, there were thoughts of raising her. A failed attempt was made in 1783. In 1834, diver Charles Deane visited her and started bringing up guns -- but he discovered the Mary Rose before he finished, and that took all his attention thereafter. The Navy finally blew up the wreck in the 1840s, presumably to clear up the channels at Spithead.
Uden/Cooper, p. 435, say that "Over the years many guns and other relics have been recovered from the anchorage... but the injudicious use of explosives has left what a modern diver described as 'no longer a ship but rather a compost heap of mud, clay, shingle.' A more enduring memorial may be found in Trafalgar Square."
The official cause of the sinking was given as the state of her timbers, but Treasure, p. 253, mentions suggestions at the time that someone on the Navy Board was guilty of neglect -- and adds that certain evidence from the court-martial was suppressed.
Admiral Richard Kempenfelt (1718-1782) had some combat experience, including as division commander at one of the expeditions to Gibraltar, but he seems to have been mostly an "ideas guy"; he gave consideration to the tactical effects of the new technique of coppering ships' bottoms (Rodger, p. 350), worked on new signaling systems (Keegan, p. 51; Rodger, p. 361), and considered new training methods (Rodger, p. 395). Treasure, pp. 252-253, says he was "one of the most thoughtful seamen of his time." His greatest success may have been dying when he did; Treasure, p. 252, says he "is more famous for the manner of his death than for what he did when he was alive." But he was an unusual British officer who rose solely on merit, without connections (Treasure, p. 253).
Dupuy/Johnson/Bongard say of Kempenfelt, "An intelligent and learned officer, Kempenfelt was noted as a scientist, scholar, and author, known both for his concern for his men's health and welfare, and for his scholarly approach to naval issues; his success at Ushant showed initiative, daring, and a clear grasp of strategy and tactics."
Uden/Cooper, p. 244, describe how his new signal system worked and quote a description of him as "a tall thin man who stooped a great deal."
For background on William Cowper, the author of this poem but known mostly for his religious verse, see the notes to "God Moves in a Mysterious Way." - RBW
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