Jamestown Homeward Bound, The

DESCRIPTION: Forecastle song. Verses describe voyages to the Mediterranean and wishes for home. Chorus ends "So fill out sails with the favoring gales and with shipmates all around. We'll give three cheers for our Starry flag and the Jamestown homeward bound."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1938 (Colcord-SongsOfAmericanSailormen)
KEYWORDS: foc's'le sailor home travel
FOUND IN: US
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Colcord-SongsOfAmericanSailormen, pp. 133-134, "The Jamestown Homeward Bound" (1 text, 1 tune)
Huntington-TheGam-MoreSongsWhalemenSang, pp. 47-48, "The Nassau Homeward Bound" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT, JAMETOWN*
Roud #4700
NOTES [210 words]: [According to Colcord-SongsOfAmericanSailormen, the] vessel referred to here is *not* the Confederate gunboat Jamestown, but a sloop of war built in 1844. She was lent by the US government to a relief organization and sailed from Boston to Cork in March, 1847 loaded with food and supplies to help the victims of the famine in Ireland. - SL
That voyage to Ireland, which Colcord-SongsOfAmericanSailormen claims is the ship's only claim to fame, is not mentioned in her version. I must admit that I am not convinced that the song is about the Jamestown; it could merely be about a ship with its homeport there.
The above was written before Huntington-TheGam-MoreSongsWhalemenSang was published. The Huntington-TheGam-MoreSongsWhalemenSang version is clearly the same song (same first line, and it uses Colcord-SongsOfAmericanSailormen's chorus as its last verse), but it never mentions Jamestown in any way; it's based in Nassau (or, perhaps, names the ship the Nassau; that seems to be Huntington's opinion). So I think we must file it as a generic song which was once particularized to Jamestown and once to Nassau.
Huntington notes that a ship Nassau was destroyed by a Confederate vessel in 1865, but there is no proof that it's the same ship. - RBW
Last updated in version 4.2
File: Colc133

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