Admiral Death

Boys, are ye calling a toast to-night?
    (Hear what the sea-wind saith)
Fill for a bumper strong and bright,
    And here's to Admiral Death!
He's sailed in a hundred builds o' boat,
He's fought in a thousand kinds o' coat,
He's the senior flag of all that float,
    And his name's Admiral Death!

Which of you looks for a service free?
    (Hear what the sea-wind saith)
The rules o' the service are but three
    When ye sail with Admiral Death.
Steady your hand in time o' squalls,
Stand to the last by him that falls,
And answer clear to the voice that calls,
    "Ay, Ay! Admiral Death!"

How will ye know him among the rest?
    (Hear what the sea-wind saith)
By the glint o' the stars that cover his breast
    Ye may find Admiral Death.
By the forehead grim with an ancient scar,
By the voice that rolls like thunder far,
By the tenderest eyes of all that are,
    Ye may know Admiral Death.

Where are the lads that sailed before?
    (Hear what the sea-wind saith)
Their bones are white by many a shore,
    They sleep with Admiral Death.
Oh! but they loved him, young and old,
For he left the laggard, and took the bold,
And the fight was fought, and the story's told,
    And they sleep with Admiral Death.

Henry John Newbolt

Sir Henry John Newbolt was an English poet and author, famous for his ballads such as 'Vitaï Lampada'. He graduated from Oxford and was called to the bar, but he is better remembered for his literary contributions than his legal career. Newbolt served as a government advisor on military and naval literature during World War I. He was knighted in 1915 for his services to literature. Newbolt's work often reflected themes of patriotism and duty.

Henry John Newbolt

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English

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Admirals All

Effingham, Grenville, Raleigh, Drake,
    Here's to the bold and free!
Benbow, Collingwood, Byron, Blake,
    Hail to the Kings of the Sea!
Admirals all, for England's sake,
    Honour be yours and fame!
And honour, as long as waves shall break,
    To Nelson's peerless name!

        Admirals all, for England's sake,
            Honour be yours and fame!
        And honour, as long as waves shall break,
            To Nelson's peerless name!

Essex was fretting in Cadiz Bay
    With the galleons fair in sight;
Howard at last must give him his way,
    And the word was passed to fight.
Never was schoolboy gayer than he,
    Since holidays first began:
He tossed his bonnet to wind and sea,
    And under the guns he ran.

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Songs of the Fleet - The Little Admiral

    Stand by to reckon up your battleships
        Ten, twenty, thirty, there they go.
    Brag about your cruisers like Leviathans--
        A thousand men a-piece down below.
    But here's just one little Admiral
        We're all of us his brothers and his sons,
    And he's worth, O he's worth at the very least
        Double all your tons and all your guns.

                Stand by, etc.


    See them on the forebridge signalling--
        A score of men a-hauling hand to hand,
    And the whole fleet flying like the wild geese
        Moved by some mysterious command.
    Where's the mighty will that shows the way to them,
        The mind that sees ahead so quick and clear?
    He's there, Sir, walking all alone there--
        ...

Henry John Newbolt

The Death Of Admiral Blake

(August 7th, 1657)

Laden with spoil of the South, fulfilled with the glory of achievement,
    And freshly crowned with never-dying fame,
Sweeping by shores where the names are the names of the victories of England,
    Across the Bay the squadron homeward came.

Proudly they came, but their pride was the pomp of a funeral at midnight,
    When dreader yet the lonely morrow looms;
Few are the words that are spoken, and faces are gaunt beneath the torchlight
    That does but darken more the nodding plumes.

Low on the field of his fame, past hope lay the Admiral triumphant,
    And fain to rest him after all his pain;
Yet for the love that he bore to his own land, ever unforgotten,
    He prayed to see the western hills again.

Fainter than stars in a sk...

Henry John Newbolt

Tom Deadlight

During a tempest encountered homeward-bound from the Mediterranean, a grizzled petty-officer, one of the two captains of the forecastle, dying at night in his hammock, swung in the sick-bay under the tiered gun-decks of the British Dreadnaught, 98, wandering in his mind, though with glimpses of sanity, and starting up at whiles, sings by snatches his good-bye and last injunctions to two messmates, his watchers, one of whom fans the fevered tar with the flap of his old sou'wester. Some names and phrases, with here and there a line, or part of one; these, in his aberration, wrested into incoherency from their original connection and import, he voluntarily derives, as he does the measure, from a famous old sea-ditty, whose cadences, long rife, and now humming in the collapsing brain, attune the last flutterings of distempered thought....

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Craven

(Mobile Bay, 1864)

Over the turret, shut in his iron-clad tower,
    Craven was conning his ship through smoke and flame;
Gun to gun he had battered the fort for an hour,
    Now was the time for a charge to end the game.

There lay the narrowing channel, smooth and grim,
    A hundred deaths beneath it, and never a sign;
There lay the enemy's ships, and sink or swim
    The flag was flying, and he was head of the line.

The fleet behind was jamming; the monitor hung
    Beating the stream; the roar for a moment hushed,
Craven spoke to the pilot; slow she swung;
    Again he spoke, and right for the foe she rushed.

Into the narrowing channel, between the shore
    And the sunk torpedoes lying in treacherous rank;
She turned but a yard too shor...

Henry John Newbolt

Songs of the Fleet - The Song of the Sou' Wester

    The sun was lost in a leaden sky,
        And the shore lay under our lee;
    When a great Sou' Wester hurricane high
        Came rollicking up the sea.
    He played with the fleet as a boy with boats
        Till out for the Downs we ran,
    And he laugh'd with the roar of a thousand throats
        At the militant ways of man:

            Oh!    I am the enemy most of might,
            The other be who you please!
            Gunner and guns may all be right,
            Flags a-flying and armour tight,
            But I am the fellow you've first to fight--
            The giant that swings the seas.

    A dozen of middies were down below
        Chasing the X they love,
    While the table curtseyed long and slow
        An...

Henry John Newbolt