Capture of the Crown, The

DESCRIPTION: "On the 26th of April, or so it does appear, The brave boys of Bristol fitted out a privateer, In command of Captain Tucker" to capture the "Bream." They find and capture the "Crown." The singer wishes good luck to the crew
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1868 ("The Life of Commodore Samuel Tucker")
KEYWORDS: ship war fight
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
1813 - battle between the "Increase" and the "Crown"
FOUND IN: US(NE)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Lane/Gosbee-SongsOfShipsAndSailors, pp. 10-11, "The Capture of the Crown" (1 composite text)
ADDITIONAL: John Habbibal Sheppard, _The Life of Samuel Tucker, Commodore in the American Revolution_, Alfred Mudge and Son (Boston), 1868 (republished by Applewood Books, 2009; available on Google Books), pp. 369-371, "(no title)" (1 text)
NOTES [260 words]: Lane/Gosbee-SongsOfShipsAndSailors say their tune is "The Bonnie Ship the Diamond." The form certainly fits, but it's not the tune I know for "The Bonnie Ship...."
I checked five histories of the War of 1812, looking for this battle; none of them mentioned it. That is not to say that it didn't happen; it's just that it wasn't important enough to get much notice outside its local area. Samuel Tucker was more noteworthy -- but for his actions in the Revolutionary War, not the War of 1812. Jameson, p. 665, for instance, gives this capsule biography:
Tucker, Samuel (1747-1833), of Masschusetts, while commander of the "Franklin" and the "Hancock" in 1776, captured more than thirty vessels. From 1777 to 1780 he commanded the "Boston," and captured many pries, including the sloop-of-war "Thorn." He commanded the "Thorn" from 1780 to 1781, when he was captured by the British frigate "Hind." He was a member of the Massachusetts Legislature from 1814 to 1818.
His entry in DAB (volume X, part 1, pp. 39-40) is much longer but doesn't mention the event either -- and in its footnotes says that the account in Sheppard, from which this song is derived, "is not free from legendary materials." I wonder if that isn't in part a reference to the giant sailor who, according to Sheppard and the Lane/Gosbee notes, threw a ship's anchor to grapple the Crown.
A perhaps-more-reliable source is Foster Smith, Captain Samuel Tucker (1747-1833) Continental Navy, Essex Institute, 1976, but this seems to be out of print and used copies are rare and expensive. - RBW
Bibliography

DAB: Dumas Malone, editor, Dictionary of American Biography, originally published in 20 volumes plus later supplementary volumes; I use the 1961 Charles Scribner's Sons edition with minor corrections which combined the original 20 volumes into 10
Jameson: J. Franklin Jameson's Dictionary of United States History 1492-1895, Puritan Press, 1894

Last updated in version 6.4
File: LaGO010

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