Royal Oak, The

DESCRIPTION: While sailing on the "Royal Oak", the singer and his fellows spy ten Turkish men-of-war. They sink three, burn three, drive three off, and capture the last, which they drag into Portsmouth harbor. The singer praises their skipper, Capt. (Wellfounder)
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1905 (Baring-Gould/Sheppard-SongsOfTheWest2ndEd)
KEYWORDS: fight navy sailor foreigner
FOUND IN: Britain(England(South,West),Scotland(Aber)) Canada(Newf)
REFERENCES (9 citations):
Gardham-EarliestVersions, "ROYAL OAK, THE"
Greig-FolkSongInBuchan-FolkSongOfTheNorthEast #64, p. 2, ("Two we sunk, and two we brunt") (1 fragment)
Greig/Duncan1 40, "The Marigold" (1 fragment)
VaughanWilliams/Lloyd-PenguinBookOfEnglishFolkSongs, p. 91, "The Royal Oak" (1 text, 1 tune)
Greenleaf/Mansfield-BalladsAndSeaSongsOfNewfoundland 42, "Turkish Men-o'-War" (1 text)
Leach-FolkBalladsSongsOfLowerLabradorCoast 56, "The Marigold" (1 text, 1 tune)
Palmer-OxfordBookOfSeaSongs 41, "Captain Mansfield's Fight with the Turks at Sea" (1 text)
Baring-Gould/Sheppard-SongsOfTheWest2ndEd, #111, "The Marigold" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT, ROYALOAK*
Roud #951
ALTERNATE TITLES:
Turkish Men of War
NOTES [279 words]: [Lloyd repeats's Firth's suggestion that] the song is based on "Kempthorne's repulse of the seven Algerine ships, December 29, 1669." - PJS
Palmer also repeats it. Just for the record: I know of no instance of Turkish warships getting close enough to England to be hauled to Portsmouth.
Baring-Gould/Sheppard-SongsOfTheWest2ndEd refers to a ship called the Marigold in Hakluyt's Voyages, but the only similarity I can see to this tale is the ship name. Perhaps Hakluyt's ship suggested the ship name used in some versions of this song. - RBW
While Leach-FolkBalladsSongsOfLowerLabradorCoast calls this "The Marigold," its ship's name is the Martha Jane, with "Captain White from fair Bristow" - BS
The name "White" in the Leach version probably isn't significant, but I will mention that there was a very famous Newfoundland captain, Edward White Sr. (1811-1886). He became famous as one of the first Newfoundland captains to command a steamship in the seal hunt; he was also a minister without portfolio in the Newfoundland government 1882-1885 (DictNewfLabrador, p. 357). He had been a sealing captain since 1836 (Ryan, p. 151). He wasn't a navy captain, and he didn't fight the Turks, so he can't have been the original captain in this song, but his fame might have suggested his insertion into a Newfoundland/Labrador text.
The name Royal Oak is a dating hint, although not much of one. The name is thought to have commemorated the oak in which the future Charles II hid from the Parliamentary soldiers in 1651. The first Royal Oak was apparently built in the 1660s and destroyed in 1667; the name was in almost continuous use after that (Uden/Cooper, p. 437). - RBW
Bibliography

DictNewfLabrador: (Robert H. Cuff, managing editor), Dictionary of Newfoundland and Labrador Biography, Harry Cuff Publications, 1990
Ryan: Shannon Ryan, The Ice Hunters: A History of Newfoundland Sealing to 1914, Breakwater Books, 1994
Uden/Cooper: Grant Uden and Richard Cooper, A Dictionary of British Ships and Seamen, 1980 (I use the 1981 St. Martin's Press edition)

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File: VWL091

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