Admiral Hosier's Ghost

DESCRIPTION: "As near Porto-Bello lying, On the gently-swelling flood... Our triumphant navy rode" after Vernon had defeated the Spanish. "The shade of Hosier brave" appears. Hosier wishes he had fought instead of obeying orders to sit idly, bringing England to shame
AUTHOR: Richard Glover (source: Stone-SeaSongsAndBallads, etc. but Percy/Wheatley-ReliquesOfAncientEnglishPoetry II mentions an attribution to "Lord Bath")
EARLIEST DATE: 1841 (Halliwell, according to Stone-SeaSongsAndBallads)
KEYWORDS: navy ghost
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
1727 - Death of Admiral Francis Hosier (born 1673)
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Percy/Wheatley-ReliquesOfAncientEnglishPoetry II, pp. 367-371, "Admiral Hosier's Ghost" (1 text)
Rimbault-Musical IllustrationsOfBishopPercysReliques XLIV, p. 87, "Admiral Hosier's Ghost" (1 partial text, 1 tune)
Stone-SeaSongsAndBallads LXIII, pp. 117-122, "Admiral Hosier's Ghost" (1 text)
Roud #22377
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, Johnson Ballads fol. 35a, "Admiral Hosier's Ghost," C. Dicey (London), 1740; also Firth c.12(14), W. Webb (London), 1740; also Harding B 1(34), unknown, n.d.; also Firth c.12(12)=Harding B 22(1)=Johnson Ballads 2294, unknown, n.d.
NOTES [116 words]: Grant Uden and Richard Cooper, A Dictionary of British Ships and Seamen, 1980 (I use the 1981 St. Martin's Press edition), p. 214, gives this mini-biography of Francis Hosier: "admiral. From 1714 to 1717 he was suspended as a suspected Jacobite, but he came back to command a squadron in the West Indies, where he died of a fever. Richard Glove (1712-85) write a popular but inaccurate ballad called 'Admiral Hosier's Ghost' suggesting that the Admiral died of a broken heart when Admiralty orders prevented him from fighting the Spaniards."
I doubt this is truly traditional, but it sure got printed a lot....
As of July 13, 2021, the link to Bodleian Johnson Ballads fol. 35a is broken. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.5
File: SSSB117

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