Mary L. Mackay, The

DESCRIPTION: About a voyage by the Mackay from Portland to Yarmouth. Driven by a gale, and handled by uninhibited officers, she ran 220 miles in 18 hours. The singer challenges others to best the mark, but admits the voyage was made on the power of Portland rum
AUTHOR: Words: Frederick W. Wallace (1886-1958)
EARLIEST DATE: 1914 (Canadian Fisherman)
KEYWORDS: ship racing sailor drink storm
FOUND IN: Canada(Mar) US(NE)
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Lomax-FolkSongsOfNorthAmerica 74, "The Mary L. Mackay" (1 text, 1 tune)
Creighton-SongsAndBalladsFromNovaScotia 132, "The Mary L MacKay" (1 text, 1 tune)
Lane/Gosbee-SongsOfShipsAndSailors, pp. 124-125, "The Mary L. McKay" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT, MARYMKAY*
Roud #1831
ALTERNATE TITLES:
The Log of the Record Run
NOTES [413 words]: This song is item dD50 in Laws's Appendix II.
According to Creighton, Wallace wrote this poem to describe an experience he had aboard the Effie M. Morrissey in 1913. She believes her informant, Edmund Henneberry, supplied the tune.
The notes in Lane/Gosbee-SongsOfShipsAndSailors give the strong impression that this song was written about a trip the Morrissey made while Bob Bartlett was her captain. This is wrong. Bob Bartlett did not take her over until 1925, more than a decade after this song was written, when a rich fan, James B. Ford, gave him the boat (Horwood, pp. 125-126). It would appear that Lane/Gosbee have confused Bob Bartlett with another of the large Bartlett clan, Harold Bartlett, who took her over in 1914 (moving her to British registry).
Lane/Gosbee also exaggerate her role as an exploration vessel; Bartlett took her to the Arctic and other places, pretending he was exploring and selling what we might call internships to the children of rich men (Horwood, pp. 126-127), but they really didn't discover much. After his time, she went into foreign service -- carrying immigrants from the Cape Verde Islands, according to Paine, p.160 -- which caused her to be renamed the Ernestina, then the Ernestina-Morrissey.
According to Paine, p. 159, the Effie M. Morrissey was built at Essex, Massachusetts, in 1894. She was a two-masted schooner, 112 feet by 13 feet by 24.4 feet, 120 tons, designed for a crew of 34.
Paine suggests Gordon Thomas's Fast and Able as a reference for the career of the Morrissey.
Although this song is apparently a close description of what happened on the Morrissey, Wallace used a different ship name in case describing the actual ship embarrassed her owners. I can't help but think the change also made the scansion easier -- fewer unstressed syllables.
The poem was originally published under the title "The Log of the Record Run." None of the traditional versions seem to be aware of this title.
Frederick William Wallace, who although born in Glasgow came to Canada in 1904 and spent the rest of his life there, eventually became famous for his writing; Wooden Ships and Iron Men (1924) is still considered a classic. But he had almost nothing published at the time he wrote this poem. In 1913, he had founded Canadian Fisherman, a magazine which he long edited; I believe he took his voyage in the Morrissey to gather material. His autobiography is Roving Fisherman.(CanadianBio, p. 868). - RBW
Bibliography

CanadianBio: W. Stewart Wallace, Editor, The Macmillan Dictionary of Canadian Biography, fourth edition revised and enlarged by W. A. McKay, Macmillan of Canada, 1978
Horwood: Harold Horwood, Bartlett: The Great Canadian Explorer, Doubleday & Co, 1977
Paine: Lincoln P. Paine, Ships of the World: An Historical Encyclopedia, Houghton Mifflin, 1997

Last updated in version 6.4
File: LoF074

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