Collecting folklore is a bit like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. You get a line of a song here and another there and you keep putting the lines and verses together until they start to form a more complete song. In searching for Australia's maritime folklore I have had to start at the beginning and, sadly, far too late. Like other folklorists (and there have only been a handful) I spent my earlier years tracking down the more obvious folklore and especially the old bush songs and ballads. I say 'too late' because our entertainment patterns have changed so dramatically over the past fifty years: we have become a nation of people who get entertained rather than when I grew up in the 1940s and 50s when we entertained each other. Singing songs, along with telling stories and dancing, has always been a favourite form of entertainment and they can also be powerful emotional tools. We tend to associate songs with events in our life and whilst they cannot be looked at for historical accuracy they are certainly fascinating time capsules and an important part of our national heritage. Music in general has become a very disposable item in our lives as we are bombarded with music just about everywhere we go from shopping centres to lifts. We look at music as an incidental whereas it used to have an important role as a storyteller and, more importantly, a traditional record of the signposts in our nation's history.

In the area of maritime folklore we have a small number of songs that concern early shipwrecks, sailors on shore leave, life on board, shanties and, of course, major events.

Shipwrecks, like most tragedies, attract public sympathy and songwriters. The wreck of the 'Yongala' off the Queensland coast resulted in at least two songs however only fragments remain.

Another version sung to me by Mr Cyril Duncan, Brisbane, in 1973 went:

Considering the number of shipwrecks scattered around Australia it is surprising that we have so few songs about such tragedies.

The songs about sailors on and off their ships range from sentimental ballads to bawdy pub songs. Some have been borrowed from other trades such as the shearers. A slight change of the words and the songs suited the sailors very nicely. There were, of course, those songs that sailors everywhere have song for years and years like Maggie May and Blow the Man Down however, once again, these are also scarce. We didn't fair much better with shanties either and this is really surprising considering the massive number of sailing ships that travelled out to Australia in the nineteenth century. This isn't to say that they weren't sung but simply they were not recorded very effectively. In my book 'Diggers Songs' I attempted to document the many songs that Australians sung in the then eleven wars we had fought in (we now have twelve with the Timor War) and I also included the songs from our navy. There were all manner of navy songs and most of them, like the army songs, telling of the bad food, lousy conditions and tough officers. I also published songs from the popular musical hall and songbooks like 'Why Can't We Have a Navy of our Own?' and the songs that we composed to welcome the Great White Fleet in 1908.

In the mid seventies I tape recorded the life story of Jimmy Cargill who had the distinction of raising the alarm over the Japanese mini sub that got caught in the Sydney Harbour net. Jimmy, a Scot by birth, had spent his early years as a whaler and throughout his recordings I managed to cajole several songs and shanties out of the depths of his eighty years plus memory. Jimmy had a wonderful voice and the more we talked the more songs he recalled. One of his 'gems' was a backroom song called Maids of Australia that tells of the first sexual encounter between an Aboriginal woman and a sailor. Jimmy said it was a bawdy song however it is a very rare and important sensual ballad. This is the only time this ballad has been recorded in Australia and it has only ever been recorded once in England where the first line went;

When Jimmy sang it the puzzle of where the Oxborough river was located was solved for he sang;

The song continues to tell of the romantic dalliance in true sailor tradition ending with:

One of the ways I collect the old songs is to write to magazines including Sydney's 'Afloat'. In a issue in 1999 I called for any contributions to my collecting work and whilst I wasn't rushed off my landlubber feet I did get a surprise in that five different people sent me verses from one particular song. 'He Played His Ukulele As The Ship Went Down' appears to be a very popular comic song however its importance to me is that it is actually a popular song from the 1930s (composed by Arthur le Clerq) and every single person who wrote to me had different verses! What had happened was that this popular song had entered the tradition and people had composed new words. Sometimes this process is the result of having forgotten the original words however, in this case, they have all gathered the songs verses from different sources and they all tell of a continuing story. Mr J D O'Connell of Oatley knew the song as 'The Nancy Lee' and recalled two opening verses from his youthful days that went;

I sing you a tale of the Nancy Lee A ship that got shipwrecked at sea The bravest man was Captain Brown Who played his ukulele as the ship went down. The Captain's wife was on the ship She thought she'd like the trip She could swim – so she wouldn't drown So they tied her to the anchor As the ship went down.

Peter Thornton from the NSW south coast said he used to sing the following quite different verse when he was a young tacker:

Ray Spinks of Strathfield who is now 73 (and is still working as a volunteer coastguard at Vaucluse) recalled his father singing this verse:

Collector Rob Willis of Forbes sent another variant that also told of the Captain's wife:

The Captain's wife was on the ship, And he was glad she made the trip, As she couldn't swim. She might not drown, So he tied her to the anchor as the ship went down. They sprung a leak just after dark And through the hole came a hungry shark It bit the Sipper near the water-mark As he played his ukulele as the ship went down.

Finally, Tim Armytage of Cheltenham, said he was “fascinated to read in Afloat the mention of the Nancy Lee – In 1968, when I was 18, I was at a party where I heard a 78rpm recording of this shanty. I was taken by its ludicrous lyrics and rollicking melody that I played it over and over until eventually the record was wrestled from my grasp and other music put on the phonograph. Several days later I returned to the scene of the party only to find the disc had been broken.” Tim has been searching for the lyrics for the past 32 years! He did remember the following:

He also mentioned that they sang 'Rule Britannia' at the end of the song.

These examples show how the folklore jigsaw puzzle comes together and just how important the occasional verse or even single line can be in putting the whole song back together.

Another popular song that came from our maritime history was a sentimental ballad called the 'Sailor's Lament' which is also sometimes known as 'The Maiden's Prayer'. Mr V J Williams of Dora Creek says he leant the song in 1947 while serving in the RAN. It is an important find for my quest because previously collected versions never had the 'sailor' reference verse.

The Sailor's Lament A man came to his home one night, To find his house without a light, He went upstairs to go to bed, When this thought came into his head. He went up to his daughter's room, There he found her hanging from a beam, He took a knife and he cut her down, And on her breast this note he found. My love is for a sailor boy, Who sails far out upon the sea, I often write and think of him, He never writes or thinks of me. My apron strings they used to meet, I used to tie them in a bow, But now my apron strings won't meet, Around my waist they will not go. Oh father I cannot stand the shame, To bear this child without a name, So dig my grave both wide and deep, And place white lilies at my feet. They dug her grave both wide and deep, And placed white lilies at her head and feet, And on her breast they placed a dove, To signify she dies for love. So all ye maidens bear in mind, A sailor's love is hard to find, And if you find one good and true, Don't change the old love for a new.

Hopefully this article will prompt a few readers into searching through their memory banks. I am interested in any song, parody or ditty and even anonymous poems that tell of Australia's maritime past. Here are a few suggestions to get your brains ticking: songs about life on board ship, shanties, love songs, songs about shipwrecks, songs about particular ships, songs about certain members of the crew, ditties about yachting (yesterday and today), songs about boat building, songs about lighthouses, docks or marinas. Navy songs, bawdy ditties, sentimental ballads, songs about the tall ships, ditties about sailors ashore, drinking songs, story songs, riverboat songs (now where the hell are these?). I am also interested in maritime drinking toasts and anything else for that matter! Well, that's a starter list!