Famous Fight at Malago, The

DESCRIPTION: Five English frigates anchor at Malaga, destroy churches and other buildings, and destroy shipping, intending to leave "many a widow." The Spanish Armada had done no harm but five English frigates made the Spaniards taste Englishmen's valor.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: c. 1684 (Ebsworth); a song "Fight at Malago" was in William Thackeray's broadside catalog by 1690
KEYWORDS: battle navy death England Spain
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
July 1656 - five English frigates bombard Malaga, Spain (source: Firth [see Notes)
FOUND IN: Britain(England(Lond))
REFERENCES (7 citations):
Gardham-EarliestVersions, "FAMOUS FIGHT AT MALAGO, THE"
OShaughnessy-MoreFolkSongsFromLincolnshire 5, "Come All You Bold Britons" (1 text, 1 tune)
Palmer-OxfordBookOfSeaSongs 15, "The Famous Fight at Malago" (1 text, 1 tune)
Stone-SeaSongsAndBallads LII, pp. 87-89, "The Famous Fight at Malago: Or, The Englishman's Victory over the Spaniards" (1 text)
Ashton-RealSailorSongs, #2, "The Famous Fight at Malago. Or, the Englishmen's VIctory over the Spaniards" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: J Woodfall Ebsworth, The Roxburghe Ballads, (Hertford, 1889 ("Digitized by Microsoft")), Vol. VI Part 2 [Part 17], pp. 411-1413, "The Famous Fight at Malago; or The Englishmans Victory over the Spaniards" (Come all you brave sailors, that sails on the main (1 text) [specifically Roxburghe II, 146; printer W O[nley], c.1684]
C.H. Firth, editor, Naval Songs and Ballads (London?:Navy Records Society, 1908 ("Digitized by Google")), pp. 47-48, "The Fight at Malago" (1 text)
Roud #296
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, Douce Ballads 1(72b), The famous fight at Malago: or, the Englishmens victory over the Spaniards ("Come all you brave sillors[sic] that sails on the main"), W. Onley (London), 1689-1709
EngBdsdBA 21866, Pepys 4.204, "The Famous Fight at Malago, Or, The Englishmen's Victory over the Spaniards" ("Come all you brave sailors that sails on the main"), I Clarke, 1684-1686, accessed 08 Dec 2013.
NOTES [134 words]: Ebsworth thinks the July 1600 registry of a ballad about "the report of a fight at sea in the straights of Gibraltar between certen merchantes shippes of England and fyve Spanish shippes of war, the 25 of Maie, 1600" refers to this ballad. Firth, however, writes that "the only ballad directly relating an incident in the wars of this period [the suppression of unlicensed books and pamphlets in 1649 and the act in 1657 against fiddlers and minstrels] is one which describes the bombardment of Malaga by five of Blake's frigates in July 1656, which is reprinted on p. 47 (p. xxvii).
O'Shaughnessy's text is a composite of a collected text that was "garbled and the narrative incomplete," a fragment in JFSS, and three stanzas from Roxburghe. The description above follows Ebsworth's Roxburghe text. - BS
Last updated in version 6.8
File: OSLin005

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