Willie Williamson            [Captain Nipper]                        SA1972.99.2 

This cheerful music-hall song has a few more verses than Willie sang and they are added below.  The song appeared in print around 1914 in a book entitled Shanties and Forebitters by Bessie (Mrs Clifford) Beckett, but it’s probably older. She possibly got it from her son who was a captain in the Royal Navy.  As for Willie, he is not sure where he ‘picked it up’ and he never heard any name to it.  Roud Index no. 10466.

On the fourteenth of November,’twas well that I remember
I nearly broke my dear old mother’s heart;
For I signed on with a skipper on a big four-masted clipper
For a voyage round the Horn and foreign parts.

And the stormy winds did blow and the ship began to roll
And the devil of a hurricane it blew.
It nearly blew the stuffing out the good ship Ragamuffin
And we thought to the bottom she would go.

And then we weighed the anchor and we set a foresail spanker
And the pilot took us to the harbour mouth
For seven days we bore it, we were running dead before it
And the course we steered was neither north nor south

And the stormy winds did blow and the ship began to roll
And the devil of a hurricane it blew
It nearly blew the stuffing out the good ship Ragamuffin
And we thought to the bottom she would go

Extra verses:

We were outbound to Calcutta with a stock of Irish butter
And cigarettes and whisky in galore
Passengers we were twenty and heav’n knows that was plenty
For the good ship could carry no blinking more.

Then the captain came on deck and he said..”Blooming heck!”
And bade each man put on an oilskin coat
He said he’d come to a decision as we’d plenty of provisions
We was going to run a record voyage out.

But the sky turned very black [and] the winds began to crack
And our fore-jib-boom-t’gans’l carried away
So we pulled the helm hard over and we sailed back to Dover
And anchored in the Downs at break of day.