Skipper Dan

DESCRIPTION: The Tiger is ready to go out. The singer on Sunday tries to borrow money from Skipper Dan. Skipper Dan refuses because the singer would get drunk. The singer replies that he will sell his rags to get money for liquor.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1976 (Lehr/Best-ComeAndIWillSingYou)
KEYWORDS: drink sailor
FOUND IN: Canada(Newf)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Lehr/Best-ComeAndIWillSingYou 97, "Skipper Dan" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #28985
NOTES [208 words]: Lehr/Best-ComeAndIWillSingYou: "No doubt more verses exist." - BS
Lehr/Best-ComeAndIWillSingYou also speculate that the "Tiger" of this song was the sealing steamer Tiger which served in Newfoundland from 1878 to 1884. There was also a Tigress, which served from 1873 to 1875. There is a problem, though, in the name "Skipper Dan." According to Chafe, p. 104, the skippers of the Tiger were James Joy (1878-1881), G. Hudson (1882), and Thomas Dawe (1883-1884). The only skipper of the Tigress was Isaac Bartlett. So neither ship could have had a "Skipper Dan." We must either find another ship or perhaps emend "Skipper Dan" to "Skipper Dawe."
It appears, however, that the Tiger may have had an earlier existence as a coastal steamer. At least, there was a Tiger which served on the coastal run until 1877 (obviously the year before the Tiger first went to the ice). That much I glean from Prim/McCarthy, p. 47; I do not know the name of the ship's captains during that period.
There was also a schooner Tiger lost in suspicions circumstances in 1893; it rather looks as if it was an insurance scam, since she had little cargo (I've lost my source for this). The captain's surname was Goodwin, but I don't know his first name. - RBW
Bibliography

Chafe: Levi George Chafe, Chafe's Sealing Book: A History of the Newfoundland Sealfishery from the Earliest Available Records Down To and Including the Voyage of 1923, third edition, Trade Printers and Publishers, Ltd., 1923 (PDF scan available from Memorial University of Newfoundland)
Parsons: Robert C. Parsons, Cape Race: Stories from the Coast that Sank the Titanic, Flanker Press, 2011
Prim/McCarthy: Captain Joseph Prim and Mike McCarthy, The Angry Seas: Shipwrecks on the Coast of Labrador, Jesperson Publishing, 1999

Last updated in version 5.1
File: LeBe097

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