Davy Lowston

DESCRIPTION: "My name is Davy Lowston, I did seal, I did seal." Lowston and crew are left to hunt seal; the ship which is to retrieve them is wrecked. After much privation, the survivors are rescued by the Governor Bligh. Lowston advises against sealing
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1967 (Bailey/Roth-ShantiesByTheWay-NZ); reportedly collected by John Leebrick in the 1920s
KEYWORDS: hunting wreck disaster hardtimes rescue New Zealand ordeal
FOUND IN: US(NE)
REFERENCES (6 citations):
Bailey/Roth-ShantiesByTheWay-NZ, "David Lowston" (1 text, 1 tune)
Colquhoun-NZ-Folksongs-SongOfAYoungCountry, p. 14, "Davy Lowston" (1 text, 1 tune) (p. 7 in the 1972 edition)
Cleveland-NZ-GreatNewZealandSongbook, pp. 41-42, "David Lowston" (1 text, 1 tune)
Garland-FacesInTheFirelight-NZ, p. 45, "(Davy Lowston)" (1 text)
DT, DAVYLOWS
ADDITIONAL: J. C. Reid, _A Book of New Zealand_ (Collins National Anthologies), Collins, 1964, pp. 282-283, "David Lowston" (1 text)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "We Will Not Go to White Bay with Casey Any More" (plot)
NOTES [1803 words]: It is ironic to note that this most iconic of New Zealand folk songs was not found in that country but rather was found by John Leebrick in the United States. Bill Morris, who as of 2019 was working on a documentary about this song, told me that Neil Colquhoun talked to Leebrick in the 1950s. It appears that all known versions derive from this report of a reported version. And no one now alive seems to know much about Leebrick. There is obviously a possibility that Colquhoun had a hand in the text or (even more likely) setting the tune.
If it is legitimate, though, it is the earliest reference in an English-language song to an event in New Zealand (Harding, p. 4, who calls it "the earliest-known Pakeha folk song"). Harding, p. 5, considers it one of just fourteen legitimate New Zealand folk songs. (A low estimate, since it omits Sutton-Smith's children's games, but if anything that count may be high for songs sung by adults.)
NewZealandEncyclopedia p. 491, says that sealers came to New Zealand within a quarter of a century of Captain Cook's discovery of the country -- only to hunt the seals effectively to extinction within three decades. "In NZ only fur seals were of any commercial value, because the water was too warm for any build-up of blubber under the skin" (although there were blubber seals on the islands to the south that were worth taking for oil). "The first sealers concentrated on Fiordland where large numbers of seals were found on the rocks around the coastline and on small islands nearby. During the first 20 years, tens of thousands of skins were taken each season from the Dusky Sound area, and round Foveaux Strait and Stewart Island.... [T]he men themselves were often left on the shore for months at a time to be picked up later with their kills, having survived arduous and uncomfortable living conditions." (Although, as any Newfoundlander can tell you, conditions on a sealing ship also featured arduous and uncomfortable living conditions!)
Sealing didn't last long in New Zealand. According to Morton, p. 109, the first known instance of a ship leaving a party behind on a New Zealand island was in November 1792, when a dozen men from the Britannia went sealing, and there does not have been another instance of it until 1803 (Morton, p. 110). That expedition suffered the loss of one man, although to drowning, not privation. The Endeavor would lose six men and a boat in 1809, while collecting some 2200 skins. Morton, p. 100, tells of a sealing gang which included the Maori chief Ruatara which had three men die of hunger and thirst.
Morton, pp. 111-112: "During these early years marooning established itself as a real risk. Ships occasionally disappeared completely after setting down sealing gangs, and the gangs, without knowing, were at the mercy of chance. The next ship might not appear for months. Some of the sealing islands were little more than barren rocks. One group of men -- made up, for various reasons, of men from two different sealing gangs -- lived for over three years on Solander Island, eating seal meat and fish, dressed in and sleeping on and under seal skins." They had hoped to have a garden, but "nothing grew on Solander Island," which is a beautiful volcanic rock that is uninhabited to this day. "They were rescued by Perseverance in 1813."
Port Jackson (Sydney) had been established in 1788, and it was used as a sealing supply hub almost at once (so Busch, p. 28). By 1800 we find contracts made between the ships and the sealers, including rules for what to do if the ship did not return on time. Interestingly, the 1800 contract did not include a provision for what to do if the ship did not return at all, or how long to wait for it (Busch, pp. 12-13).
This song is a mostly-true story, though there has been a lot of confusion along the way. Versions of it are found in several histories of New Zealand.
Morton, p. 112, based on the Sydney Gazette and papers in the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington, comes up with this summary:
"Captain Grono rescued ten men of a gang from the unlucky and ill-fated brig Active. Originally a French ship, she was captured by the British. As a British ship sailing from Hobart she was wrecked and severely damaged in Bass Strait, requiring salvage and then repairs in Port Jackson. On her first voyage after her reconditioning she set down a sealing gang in Jackson Bay on the west coast of New Zealand [the South Island; there are no towns nearby even today] and then simply disappeared. To this day no one knows what happened to her. Active's gang, not knowing that the ship had vanished permanently, spent three full years on the west coast of New Zealand, collecting over 11,800 sealskins and managing through all difficulties to preserve 8,700.
"They had given up hope of the Active's return and had laboriously carved eighty half in boards from eighty separate tree trunks in order to build a vessel when Captain Grono arrived in Governor Bligh on 27 November 1813. He took the survivors to his home and three of them married three of his seven daughters. The owners of the Governor Bligh were not as kind as Grono. They took 3,200 of the 8.700 skins as passage money."
(On p. 106 Morton tells us about the men's rescuer: "Captain John Grono, an English seaman, Australian land owner, and New Zealand sealer, build ships for the sealing trade on the Hawkesbury River near Windsor, New South Wales.")
Reed, although I would consider him less reliable, gives even more details. On p. 71 he quotes Robert McNab's suggestion that the place where the men were left was not Jackson Bay but Secretary Island, a few dozen miles down the South Island coast, separated from the mainland by a half mile waterway now called Thompson Strait. Secretary Island is also far, far from anywhere. They were left with a whaleboat, an axe, an adze, a cooper's drawing knife, a few other tools, and a small supply of provisions. They found fresh water, built themselves a hut, and started sealing.
Then the winter came on. Their provisions were gone, and southern New Zealand in winter is cold and stormy. The seals were gone, so they had little to eat but a sort of fern that had to be eaten raw; it made them sick if cooked (Reed, p. 72).
They decided to cross to the mainland, only to find that their boat had rotted; they barely made it across. Clearly they could not trust that boat again. They did find the ruins of another boat, but it wasn't seaworthy either. They built another hut, and worked to repair the boats -- only to have them both ruined by a storm. And the coast offered no more food than their island. They managed to build a sealskin boat and return to their island. There, using their few tools, they set out to build their own boat, without nails. And with no saw, they could only cut one board from each tree they felled (Reed, p. 73). It was sheer chance that the Governor Bly saw and rescued them.
Reed too considers the fate of the Active a mystery, "though in later days it was believed that portions of her wreckage had been found on the coast near Arahura River." Based on Ingram, p. 4, she was only the fourth or fifth European ship to go down in New Zealand waters, depending on just when she was lost.
It probably isn't cause and effect, but New Zealand sealing, which had begun in 1792, went into a decline the moment the Active was lost. Jackson/McRobie, p. 206, say that "After 1810 sealing declined [in New Zealand] but revived to some degree in New Zealand's sub-arctic islands during the 1820s and 1830s."
The one thing not found in these summaries is the names of the sealers. For this we can turn to "The Story of David Lowston, a pre-colonial NZ song," an article by Frank Fyfe published in the Journal of New Zealand Folklore in 1970 and now available online at the New Zealand folklore web site.
All dates in what follows are somewhat uncertain. I'm going to leave out all the "probablies" and just summarize.
It was in 1809 that the brig Active, Captain John Bader (corrupted to Bedar in the song, probably for metrical reasons) advertised for hands. The Active sailed from Sydney on December 11, 1809; on February 16, 1810, a party of ten sealers under David Lowrieston was left on an island off New Zealand. They had relatively few supplies; Bader promised to return soon with more, but the Active was never seen again.
The sealing crew had to survive by hunting seals and digging up roots; they seem to have been amazingly inept, watching two boats destroyed, but despite their privations (and the implication of the song), none of them actually died. They were rescued by the Governor Bligh, and arrived in Sydney on December 15, 1813.
Garland-FacesInTheFirelight-NZ, pp. 46-47, quotes an article from the Dec. 23, 1813 Sydney Gazette telling what was known at the time. On p. 47 Garland quotes an account of the finding of the Active's wreck in 1847.
The rest of Fyfe's speculation must be taken with a grain of salt. He believes the song to be based on "Captain Kidd," and there are obvious resemblances of form. However, "Davy Lowston" as it was collected (from an American, of all things) is not sung to "Captain Kidd," and while several of the musical phrases are similar, others are strikingly different.
Indeed, "Davy Lowston" cannot be sung to the usual "Captain Kidd"/"Wondrous Love" by any amount of squeezing, as the following analysis will show; I print the common text of "Davy Lowston," and note the differing number of syllables in "Captain Kidd."
My name is Davy Lowston (1 extra syllable in DL; could perhaps be adapted -- though Fyfe argues that the original was "My name is David Lawrieston," which would never fit no matter what squeezing applied)
I did seal, I did seal (compatible)
My name is Davy Lowston, I did seal. (compatible)
Though my men and I were lost (1 extra syllable in DL; could be adapted)
Though our very lives it cost (1 fewer syllable in DL, hard to adapt)
We did seal (2 fewer syllable in DL, no adaption possible)
We did seal, we did seal. (compatible with some versions of Captain Kidd).
I allow the possibility that "Davy Lowston" is derived from Captain Kidd, or one of its folk relatives, but it's far from certain.
Cleveland lists the tune not as "Captain Kidd" but as "Sam Hall." The two are of course similar, but I think "Sam Hall" is a better fit. Although the way I've heard "Davy Lowston" is not quite the same as any version of "Sam Hall" that I've heard.
Fyfe also believed that the song was brought to the United States by the whaler Erie, which sailed the southern Pacific starting in 1832 and was lost in 1840. This is certainly possible, but I'd need stronger evidence than Fyfe offered.
Thanks to Bill Morris for sharing his research on this song. - RBW
BibliographyLast updated in version 6.5
File: DTdavylo

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

The Ballad Index Copyright 2024 by Robert B. Waltz and David G. Engle.