 by JOHN LOW
The DreadnoughtThe first verse and chorus of 'The Waterwitch' derive from a song of the Western Ocean packets, versions of which appear generally under two titles – 'The Dreadnaught' (sometimes spelt 'Dreadnought', as in the version printed below) and 'The Liverpool Packet' - and as both forebitter and capstan shanty (with chorus). The ship known as the Dreadnaught, probably the best known of the packet ships, was built in Massachusetts, at Newburyport, in 1853 and became famous for her fast Atlantic crossings. She was wrecked off Cape Horn in 1869.
Both Roy Palmer [1986] and Stan Hugill [1961] suggest that the song derived from an earlier naval ballad titled 'The Flash Frigate' and Hugill goes on to say that “as a Sailor John's forebitter it was named 'The Dreadnaught', and as a capstan shanty its title, usually, was 'The Liverpool Packet' or 'Bound Away!' but quite often the last three titles were used indiscriminately.” The song was popular and had a much wider currency than merely among the sailors of the Atlantic packet run. George Haswell, for example, collected a shanty version while travelling to Australia from London in 1879. The inclusion of the chorus in 'The Waterwitch' suggests that its composers were using one of the shanty versions as their model and that the new song was also intended for use as a shanty. While the whalers of the Waterwitch imposed the stamp of their profession upon the appropriated portion of 'The Liverpool Packet' by inserting the reference to cruising “round the west'ard amongst the sperm whale” into the second line of verse 1, the principal song they chose to draw upon and from which the remaining verses of 'The Waterwitch' are taken, required no such adaptation. This was 'The Coast of Peru'.
The Coast of Peru'The Coast of Peru' appears to have been collected solely from American sources and probably originated among the first American whalers to enter the Pacific Ocean via Cape Horn in the early 1790s. Collected versions of this song have been published in Colcord [1938], Doerflinger [1951] and Huntington [1964], while a New Zealand version, 'New Zealand Whales', appeared in Bailey & Roth [1967].A verse comparison of 'The Waterwitch' with these versions of 'The Coast of Peru' is revealing. Verse 2 of 'The Waterwitch' is present, with some variations in words and verse order, in each. Verse 3 appears to be incomplete but relates to verses in all but the Doerflinger version, while equivalents of verse 4 appear only in those recorded by Bailey/Roth and Doerflinger. It is interesting that Robson's informant included no verses that describe the most dramatic and exciting part of the whale hunt, the chase and kill. This is dealt with in all the versions mentioned above and it is hard to believe that it would not have been part of The Waterwitch as originally sung. Brad Tate, when he published the song in 1988, clearly thought so and added the appropriate verses to extend the song. New Zealand WhalesThe above verse analysis shows that the only version of 'The Coast of Peru' to contain equivalents of all the verses collected by Robson in 1961 is the New Zealand localisation 'New Zealand Whales'! While this, of course, does not prove a direct kinship between this song and 'The Waterwitch' the possibility should at least be considered.
'New Zealand Whales' was collected by an American composer John Leebrick who, while corresponding with the Kiwi folk musician Neil Colquhoun in 1957, sent him this and several other songs. These, we are told, were collected from the daughter of an American whaling captain who had spent a number of seasons in New Zealand waters. The folklorist Frank Fyfe, in the course of a series of articles about the Leebrick and other NZ whaling songs published in the journal of the NZ Folklore Society in the early 1970s, dated the creation of 'New Zealand Whales' to the 1830s. He concluded “that it was collected around 1836 at either Kororareka or Cloudy Bay and that its currency in New Zealand at that time seems to have been limited to American whalemen.” Hobart was a popular port of call for American whalers operating in Australasian waters and its own local whalers were active around the coast of New Zealand from the 1830s. It is, therefore, more than likely that 'New Zealand Whales' and other versions of 'The Coast of Peru' had achieved a currency in the Hobart whaling community by the time the Waterwitch began its Tasmanian whaling career. Apart from mixing with American whalers in the pubs of Hobart and at favoured locations around the coast of New Zealand that periodically grew into cosmopolitan whaling communities, Tasmanian whalers were not without experience of life on American ships. J.E.Philp records, for example, that a Tasmanian served as second mate on the American whaleship Eliza Adams and that a former mate of the Waterwitch had extensive experience of both Colonial and American whaling methods. Americans also, no doubt, served on local whaleships, including (though I haven't verified this) the Waterwitch itself. Despite being a cobbling together of two 'foreign' songs, 'The Waterwich' is not without interest to the Australian folklorist. The song possesses a rare status for, unlike 'New Zealand Whales', it appears to be an adaptation made by colonial whalers. It illustrates that, just as there was a 'community' of bush workers in Australia, there also existed an earlier 'community' among the disparate nationalities of whalers operating in Australasian waters in which the same principles of casual sharing and transmission of 'folk' culture operated, albeit with less enduring local effect. Though whaling by its nature was an 'international' occupation, methods varied from nation to nation and had whaling not decreased so rapidly in the late 19th century the song may well have undergone further Australianisation.
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