Union from St John's, The

DESCRIPTION: On (December 18) a heavy storm drives the Union ashore. A rescue team boards the next morning and finds "three frozen seamen lashed to the pumps while six in her cabin lay cold."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1926 (Eckstorm/Smyth-MinstrelsyOfMaine); 19C (broadside, LOCSinging as114210)
KEYWORDS: death sea ship storm wreck
FOUND IN: Canada(Newf) US(NE)
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Peacock, pp. 978-980, "The Union from St John's" (1 text, 2 tunes)
Lehr/Best-ComeAndIWillSingYou 112, "The Wreck of the Union" (2 texts, 2 tunes)
Eckstorm/Smyth-MinstrelsyOfMaine, pp. 273-280, "The Union of Saint John" (2 texts plus numerous fragments)
Lane/Gosbee-SongsOfShipsAndSailors, pp. 232-233, "The Union of St John" (1 text, 1 tune, composite)
Roud #4371
RECORDINGS:
Michael Aylward, "The Union from St John's" (on PeacockCDROM)
Mrs. Wallace Kinslow, "The Union from St John's" (on PeacockCDROM)
Francis O'Brien, "The Wreck of the St. John" (on MUNFLA/Leach)
BROADSIDES:
LOCSinging, as114210, "Union of St. Johns," L. Deming (New York), 19C
ALTERNATE TITLES:
The Brig Union
NOTES [427 words]: Broadside LOCSinging as114210, as well as one cited by Lehr/Best-ComeAndIWillSingYou as being printed in Eckstorm/Smyth-MinstrelsyOfMaine, have the site as Mt Desert Rock. There is a Mount Desert Rock in Maine which has been the site of a number of wrecks; there have also been a number of [ships named] Union with St John's registry wrecked; I cannot find any Union wrecked at Mount Desert Rock, or wrecked around February 9 (the date in the broadside), or November 18 or January 14 (the date in Lehr/Best-ComeAndIWillSingYou versions A and B, respectively). [Eckstorm/Smyth-MinstrelsyOfMaine's versions make it February 9. - RBW]
Eckstorm/Smyth-MinstrelsyOfMaine: "nobody knew it, but only knew someone else who used to know it. [One of the three] leaders in popularity among the shipwreck songs of the Maine coast ... About 1904, Mr Walter M Hady ... learned that the Union was a brig, wrecked off the Maine coast at least as early as 1837 .... [One broadside] may yet show that the wreck of the Union dates back into the eighteen-twenties." ( pp. 270, 276, 280). Unfortunately the broadside at America Singing is undated (printed by L Deming, No 62 Hanover Street, Boston). It would be nice to be able to date it early enough to rule out the Dec 21, 1884 wreck of the schooner Union, registered at St John, NB, at Mt Desert Island en route from New York to St John. (source: Northern Shipwrecks Database). - BS
I can't find any ships that fit, either (O'Neill, pp. 1034-1035, mentions hundreds of ships which visited St. John's, but no Union), but with the date and the place both in doubt, how would we know if we had a fit? I wonder, too, if this might not be a case of two stories getting combined -- possibly by the confusion of St. John, New Brunswick, and St. John's, Newfoundland. Union seems to have been a popular name for Newfoundland ships; Galgay/McCarthy1, p. 92, lists a sealing brig under J. Delaney which went to the ice for the first time on March 1, 1834 and was never seen again; Galgay/McCarthy2, p. 111, mentions a brig from Harbour Grace wrecked at Sprout Cove on December 2, 1872. It's interesting to see that Newfoundland, which had no labour unions until much later and which hated the idea of union with Canada, was so fond of "Union" as a ship name.
Which perhaps makes it possible that "Union" is a distortion of the correct name. "Unicorn" might be a possibility; also, a ship from the Maritimes originally named Queen of the Fleet (yes, really) was later renamed the Uniao although that was too late to be our ship. - RBW
BibliographyLast updated in version 6.4
File: Pea978

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