The Yankee Man-of-War
By Anonymous (before 1816) |
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'TIS of a gallant
Yankee ship that flew the stripes and stars,
And the
whistling wind from the west-nor'-west blew through the
pitch-pine spars;
With her starboard tacks aboard, my
boys, she hung upon the gale;
On an autumn night we
raised the light on the old Head of Kinsale.
It was
a clear and cloudless night, and the wind blew steady and
strong,
As gayly over the sparkling deep our good ship
bowled along;
With the foaming seas beneath her bow the
fiery waves she spread,
And bending low her bosom of
snow, she buried her lee cat-head.
There was no talk
of short'ning sail by him who walked the poop,
And under
the press of her pond'ring jib, the boom bent like a hoop!
And the groaning water-ways told the strain that held
her stout main-tack,
But he only laughed as he glanced
aloft at a white and silvery track.
The mid-tide
meets in the Channel waves that flow from shore to shore,
And the mist hung heavy upon the land from Featherstone
to Dunmore,
And that sterling light in Tusker Rock where
the old bell tolls each hour,
And the beacon light that
shone so bright was quench'd on Waterford Tower.
What looms upon our starboard bow? What hangs upon the
breeze?
'T is time our good ship hauled her wind abreast
the old Saltees,
For by her ponderous press of sail and
by her consorts four
We saw our morning visitor was a
British man-of-war.
Up spake our noble Captain then,
as a shot ahead of us past�
"Haul snug your flowing
courses! lay your topsail to the mast!"
Those Englishmen
gave three loud hurrahs from the deck of their covered ark,
And we answered back by a solid broad-side from the
decks of our patriot bark.
"Out booms! out booms!"
our skipper cried, "out booms and give her sheet,"
And
the swiftest keel that was ever launched shot ahead of the
British fleet,
And amidst a thundering shower of shot,
with stun'-sails hoisting away,
Down the North Channel
Paul Jones did steer just at the break of day. |
By
Anonymous (before 1816)
Listed November 5, 2012
Note: In the attack on Mobile Bay during the Civil War the monitor
Tecumseh was sunk by a
torpedo.
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