Abstract
This chapter considers how song framed representations of and social attitudes towards sailors and keelmen on Tyneside. A brief social history of Tyneside song culture is provided in the first section, moving towards a broad discussion of the representation of sailors in Tyneside verse in the early nineteenth century. The chapter then focusses upon the song and poetry of Gateshead-born sailmaker Robert Gilchrist (1797–1844), whose verse spoke to the cultural and economic impacts of sailing on the local community. Through a selective textual analysis of key works that dealt with sailors, sailing and the dangers of the sea, the chapter will show, through Gilchrist’s verse, the forms of belonging and attachment that cohered around Tyneside’s sailors and keelmen, as both provincial heroes and social fools.
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Notes
- 1.
Robert Gilchrist is my great-great-great-grandfather.
- 2.
J. Ellis, J (1984) ‘A dynamic society: social relations in Newcastle upon Tyne 1660-1760’. In P. Clark (ed.) The Transformation of English Provincial Towns 1600–1800 (London: Hutchinson), p.193.
- 3.
A.W. Purdue (2011) Newcastle: The Biography (Stroud: Amberley), p.119.
- 4.
E. MacKenzie, E. (1827) A Descriptive and Historical Account of the Town and County of Newcastle upon Tyne (Newcastle: MacKenzie & Dent), p.164.
- 5.
R. Samuel (1973) ‘Comers and goers’. In H.J. Dyos & M. Wolff (eds.) The Victorian City, Images and Realities, Vol. 1 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd), pp.123–160.
- 6.
N. McCord (2000) ‘Victorian Newcastle observed: the diary of Richard Lowry’, Northern History, XXXVII, p.241.
- 7.
R. Colls (1977) The Collier’s Rant: Song and Culture in the Industrial Village (London: Croom Helm); D. Harker (1972) ‘Thomas Allan and ‘Tyneside song”, in Allan’s Illustrated Edition of Tyneside Songs (Newcastle: Frank Graham): lii-xxix; D. Harker (1981) ‘The making of the Tyneside concert hall’, Popular Music, 1: 26–56.
- 8.
I. Land, (2009) War, Nationalism, and the British Sailor, 1750–1850 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp.45–53.
- 9.
Harker, ‘Thomas Allan and ‘Tyneside song”.
- 10.
See T. Allan (1972 [1891]) Allan’s Illustrated Edition of Tyneside Songs and Readings. Revised Edition (Newcastle: Thomas and George Allan).
- 11.
M. Vicinus (1975) Broadsides of the Industrial North (Newcastle upon Tyne: Frank Graham).
- 12.
See P. Wood (2014) ‘The Newcastle song chapbooks’, in D. Atkinson & S. Roud (eds.) Street Ballads in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Ireland, and North America: The Interface between Print and Oral Traditions (Farnham: Ashgate), pp.59–76.
- 13.
Ibid., p.67.
- 14.
For example, ‘Sally’s love for a sailor’ (c. 1800–1815). Anon. In the local version the line ‘As careless I wandered down London street’, has been changed to ‘As carelessly I walked down upon Newcastle Quay’. John Bell Collection of Local Songs, Newcastle University Specialist Collections.
- 15.
For example, The Thrush. A New Song Book (c.1804-1810), contained “Celebrated songs” including ‘The Death of Nelson’, ‘The Battle of Trafalgar’, ‘The Battle of Salamanca’, ‘The Wounded Hussar’, ‘The Soldier’s Funeral’ (J. Marshall, Newcastle-upon-Tyne).
- 16.
Wood, ‘The Newcastle song chapbooks’, p.68.
- 17.
Ibid., p.69.
- 18.
E. MacKenzie, A Descriptive and Historical Account, p.78. See also, D.J. Rowe (1968) ‘The strikes of the Tyneside keelmen in 1809 and 1819’, International Review of Social History, 13(1): 58–75; N. McCord (1968) ‘The seamen’s strike of 1815 in North-East England’, The Economic History Review, 21(1): 127–143.
- 19.
Examples here include ‘Tyne Cossacks’ (c.1815) and P. Dennison’s ‘Touch on the Times’. John Bell Collection of Local Songs.
- 20.
J. Ellis (2001) ‘The ‘Black Indies’: the economic development of Newcastle, c.1700-1840’, in R. Lancaster and B. Colls (eds.) Newcastle Upon Tyne: A Modern History (Chichester: Phillimore), p.6.
- 21.
R. Hermeston (2014) ‘Indexing Bob Cranky: social meaning and the voices of pitmen and keelmen in early nineteenth-century Tyneside song’, Victoriographies, 4(2), pp.164–165.
- 22.
Colls, The Collier’s Rant, p.26.
- 23.
See Allan, Tyneside Songs and Readings.
- 24.
Harker, ‘The making of the Tyneside concert hall’, pp.41–43.
- 25.
Harker, ‘Thomas Allan and ‘Tyneside song”.
- 26.
P. Joyce (1991) Visions of the People: Industrial England and the Question of Class 1848–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p.233.
- 27.
Hermeston, ‘Indexing Bob Cranky’.
- 28.
M. Hirsch (1985) ‘Sailmakers: the maintenance of craft tradition in the age of steam’, in R. Harrison and J. Zeitlin (eds.) Divisions of Labour: Skilled Workers and Technological Change in Nineteenth Century Britain (Brighton: The Harvester Press), p.89.
- 29.
E. Hobsbawm (1979) Labouring Men: Studies in the History of Labour (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson), pp.272–315.
- 30.
‘Admissions certificates to the Incorporated Company of Sailmakers’, Tyne and Wear Archives (TWA), Newcastle-upon-Tyne, GU/SL/4/667/3.
- 31.
I. Land (2002) ‘The many-tongued hydra: sea talk, maritime culture, and Atlantic identities, 1700-1850’, Journal of American and Comparative Cultures, 25(3–4), p.414.
- 32.
Hirsch, ‘Sailmakers’.
- 33.
Allan, Tyneside Songs and Readings, p.169.
- 34.
The Monthly Chronicle of North-Country Lore and Legend, May 1888, p.234.
- 35.
These included Fordyce’s (1842) Newcastle Song Book, Joseph Robson’s (1849) Songs of the Bards of the Tyne, Joseph Crawhall’s (1888) A Beuk O’Newcassel Sangs, and Allan’s (1891) Tyneside Songs and Readings.
- 36.
R. Welford (1895) Men of Mark ’Twixt Tyne and Tweed. Volume II (London: Walter Scott), p.295.
- 37.
D. Bell (2006) The Folk Doon on the Kee (Characters of Old Tyneside) (Newcastle: Jagram Publications), p.9.
- 38.
For instance, Gilchrist ‘sung with great applause’ at the opening of the Grainger Market on 22 October 1835. Newcastle Journal 24 October 1835; see also, Newcastle Journal, 27 May 1837.
- 39.
Company books of the Incorporated Company of Sailmakers, TWA, GU/SL/2/2.
- 40.
N. McCord (1969) ‘The implementation of the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act on Tyneside’, International Review of Social History, 14(1): 90–108.
- 41.
Newcastle Poor Law Union Minutes 1836–1845, TWA, PU.NC/Accession 359.
- 42.
Allan, Tyneside Songs and Readings, p.176. For more on the Barge Day rituals see, G.J. Milne (2006) North East England 185–1914: The Dynamics of a Maritime-Industrial Region (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press), pp.104–106.
- 43.
Colls, The Collier’s Rant; Harker, ‘The making of the Tyneside concert hall’; D. Harker (1986) ‘Joe Wilson: “comic dialect singer” or class traitor?’. In J.S. Bratton (ed.) Music hall: Performance and Style (Milton Keynes: Open University Press), pp.110–130; D. Harker, (2012) Gannin’ to Blaydon Races! The life and times of George Ridley (Newcastle: Tyne Bridge Publishing).
- 44.
B. Keegan (2011) “Incessant toil and hands innumerable’: Mining and poetry in the Northeast of England, Victoriographies 1(2): 177–201; Hermeston, ‘Indexing Bob Cranky’.
- 45.
Gee-ho! Dobbin was a catchy old English dance tune to which countless broadside songs had been set (some quite bawdy—that is, ‘The Buxom Dairy Maid’), which had been popularised in the comic ballad opera Love in a Village, by Thomas Arne and Isaac Bickerstaff in 1762. Many local songsters adopted the tune; it is found in William Mitford’s ‘Cappy, or the Pitman’s Dog’, ‘The Jenny Hoolet; or, Lizzie Mudie’s Ghost’ by William Armstrong and ‘Newcastle Wonders’ by Robert Emery. Mrs Micawbar is caught singing the song, later, in Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield.
- 46.
Allan, Tyneside Songs and Readings, p.186.
- 47.
‘The Amphitrite’, writes Colls, ‘was one of the more famous of the river’s brigs, two hundred and twenty-one tons, she was built in 1776 at Shields’. Colls, The Collier’s Rant, p.200.
- 48.
‘Kite’ is a dialect word for stomach; its use in this context shows the captain to be thinking with his belly rather than his brain.
- 49.
Hermeston, ‘Indexing Bob Cranky’, p.164.
- 50.
R.W. Johnson (1895) The Making of the Tyne. A Record of Fifty Years’ Progress (London: Walter Scott), p.300.
- 51.
In a similar vein, see ‘The Skipper’s Mistake’ (anon) in The Shield’s Song Book, Being a Collection of Comic and Sentimental Songs, Never before Published. This songbook was ‘Written by the Gentlemen of the Neighbourhood’ and printed by G.W. Barnes of South Shields, in 1826. Newcastle Central Library.
- 52.
Harker, ‘The making of the Tyneside concert hall’.
- 53.
On ‘Newcastle’s ‘eccentrics’, see J. Gregory (2005) ‘“Local characters”: eccentricity and the North East in the nineteenth century’, Northern History, 42(1): 164–187.
- 54.
The labouring-class poet faced a quandary in the reception of their work. Keegan and Goodridge note, ‘For polite audiences, dialect poetry was “interesting”, whereas publishing poetry in polite idioms was presumptuous, or even politically suspect.’ Where popular songs received audience approval, the social position of the composer compromised the ability to be accepted in more refined company. B. Keegan and J. Goodridge (2004) ‘Clare and the traditions of labouring-class verse’. In T. Keymer and J. Mee (eds.) The Cambridge Companion to English literature 1740–1830 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p.281.
- 55.
R. Gilchrist (1826) Poems (Newcastle: W. Boag), pp.87–87.
- 56.
C. Thompson (2007) The Suffering Traveller and the Romantic Imagination (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp.40–44.
- 57.
R. Hermeston (2011) “The Blaydon Races’: lads and lasses, song tradition, and the evolution of an anthem’, Language and Literature, 20(4): 269–282.
- 58.
There are parallels here to older verse, for instance, ‘A Song in Praise of the Keelmen Volunteers’. J. Bell (1812) Rhymes of Northern Bards (Newcastle upon Tyne), p.86.
- 59.
The ship was carrying cargo valued at £40,000 from Newcastle to London. http://www.redcar.org/shipwrecks-part-1/
- 60.
Thompson, The Suffering Traveller.
- 61.
‘Newspaper cuttings of Tyneside songs and miscellaneous subjects’, folder 11, Thomas Allan Collection, Newcastle City Library. A letter to Allan from John Robinson (n.d.) reveals that John Luke Clennell wrote a song about Grace Darling published in November 1838 and ‘D.D.M.’ had a poem published in the Gateshead Observer on 20 November 1838. William Wordsworth wrote his famous poem ‘Grace Darling’ in March 1843, which was published by seven newspapers in April 1843. See J. Von Dan (1978) ‘The publication of Wordsworth’s ‘Grace Darling”, Notes and Queries, CCXXIII: 223–225.
- 62.
‘Grace Darling’, The Montly Chronicle of North-Country Lore and Legend, June 1888, p.267.
- 63.
H. Cunningham (2007) Grace Darling: Victorian Heroine (London: Hambledon Continuum), pp.29–48.
- 64.
On the mediating role of the local poet, see K. Blair (2014) ‘“A very poetical town”: newspaper poetry and the working-class poet in Victorian Dundee’, Victorian Poetry, 52(1): 89–109.
- 65.
Berwick Advertiser, 29 October 1842.
- 66.
T. Arthur, T. (1885 [1st ed. 1875]) The Life of Grace Darling, the Heroine of the Farne Islands (London), p.101.
- 67.
‘To the memory of the late Archibald Reed, Esq.’, Newcastle Journal, 28 January 1843; ‘On the death of old Thomas Porteus, R.N.’, Newcastle Journal, 11 March 1843.
- 68.
See, for instance, B. Keegan (2001) ‘Cobbling verse: shoemaker poets of the long eighteenth century’, The Eighteenth Century, 42(3): 195–217.
- 69.
Ned Corvan (1830–1865), the Tyneside music hall singer and performer, for example, continued the tradition of comic song, but also used song to articulate political sympathies. This he achieved through the publication of ‘£4. 10s. Or, the Sailor’s Strike’ and ‘The Funny Time Comin’ on a broadside to support the 1851 seaman’s strike. I. Peddie (2009) ‘Playing at poverty: the music hall and the staging of the working class’. In A. Krishnamurthy (ed.) The Working-Class Intellectual in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Britain (Farnham: Ashgate), pp.241–243.
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Colls, R. (1977). The Collier’s Rant: Song and culture in the industrial village. London: Croom Helm.
Cunningham, H. (2007). Grace darling: Victorian heroine (pp. 29–48). London: Hambledon Continuum.
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Ellis, J. (2001). The ‘Black Indies’: The economic development of Newcastle, c.1700-1840. In R. Lancaster & B. Colls (Eds.), Newcastle Upon Tyne: A modern history. Phillimore: Chichester.
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Harker, D. (1891, 1972 ed.). Thomas Allan and ‘Tyneside song’. In Allan’s illustrated edition of Tyneside songs. Newcastle: Frank Graham.
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Harker, D. (1986). Joe Wilson: “comic dialect singer” or class traitor?. In J. S. Bratton (Ed.), (1986, ed.) Music hall: Performance and style (pp. 110–130). Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
Harker, D. (2012). Gannin’ to Blaydon Races! The life and times of George Ridley. Newcastle: Tyne Bridge Publishing.
Hermeston, R. (2011). ‘The Blaydon Races’: Lads and lasses, song tradition, and the evolution of an anthem. Language and Literature, 20(4), 269–282.
Hermeston, R. (2014). Indexing Bob Cranky: Social meaning and the voices of Pitmen and Keelmen in early nineteenth-century Tyneside song. Victoriographies, 4(2), 164–165.
Hirsch, M. (1985). Sailmakers: The maintenance of craft tradition in the age of steam. In R. Harrison & J. Zeitlin (Eds.), Divisions of labour: Skilled workers and technological change in nineteenth century Britain. Brighton: The Harvester Press.
Hobsbawm, E. J. (1979). Labouring men: Studies in the history of labour (pp. 272–315). London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
Johnson, R. W. (1895). The making of the Tyne. A record of fifty years’ progress. London: Walter Scott.
Joyce, P. (1991). Visions of the people: Industrial England and the question of class 1848–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Keegan, B. (2001). Cobbling verse: Shoemaker poets of the long eighteenth century. The Eighteenth Century, 42(3), 195–217.
Keegan, B. (2011). ‘Incessant toil and hands innumerable’: Mining and poetry in the Northeast of England. Victoriographies, 1(2), 177–201.
Keegan, B., & Goodridge, J. (2004). Clare and the traditions of labouring-class verse. In T. Keymer & J. Mee (Eds.), The Cambridge companion to English literature 1740–1830. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Land, I. (2002). The many-Tongued Hydra: Sea talk, maritime culture, and Atlantic identities, 1700-1850. Journal of American and Comparative Cultures, 25(3–4), 414.
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MacKenzie, E. (1827). A descriptive and historical account of the town and county of Newcastle upon Tyne. Newcastle: MacKenzie & Dent.
McCord, N. (1968). The Seamen’s strike of 1815 in North-East England. The Economic History Review, 21(1), 127–143.
McCord, N. (1969). The implementation of the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act on Tyneside. International Review of Social History, 14(1), 90–108.
McCord, N. (2000). Victorian Newcastle observed: The diary of Richard Lowry. Northern History, 27, 241.
Milne, G. J. (2006). North East England 185–1914: The dynamics of a maritime-industrial region (pp. 104–106). Woodbridge: The Boydell Press.
Peddie, I. (2009). Playing at poverty: The music hall and the staging of the working class. In A. Krishnamurthy (Ed.), The working-class intellectual in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain (pp. 241–243). Farnham: Ashgate.
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Wood, P. (2014). The Newcastle song chapbooks. In D. Atkinson & S. Roud (Eds.), Street ballads in nineteenth-century Britain, Ireland, and North America: The interface between print and oral traditions. Farnham: Ashgate.
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Gilchrist, P. (2016). ‘Hail, Tyneside Lads in Collier Fleets’: Song Culture, Sailing and Sailors in North-East England. In: Beaven, B., Bell, K., James, R. (eds) Port Towns and Urban Cultures. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-48316-4_3
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