SOME THOUGHTS ON A TASMANIAN WHALING SONG
AND ITS ORIGINS.by John Low
INTRODUCTION
In the last issue of Simply Australia Warren Fahey highlighted the scarcity of songs from our maritime history. In the area of whaling this is particularly so for, despite the fact that whaling has played such an important part in the social and economic life of Australia and New Zealand, the number of whaling songs with specific Australasian associations is few.
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It would seem, as Graham Seal [introduction to Haswell, 1992] has pointed out in relation to shanties generally, that the international stock of songs sufficed. After all, the whaling community that 'fished' Australasian waters was, indeed, an international one. However, the survival of the Tasmanian whaling song, 'The Waterwitch', while it appears to be merely a cut-and-paste appropriation of two 'international' songs, does provide evidence that localisation of at least some of this material did take place.
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'The Waterwitch', as far as I can tell, first appeared in print in 1964 in T. Inglis Moore's Poetry in Australia Vol.1: From the Ballads to Brennan. It was collected by the historian L. L. Robson in Hobart in 1961 from 88 year old Mr. Davies, a resident at St. John's Home for the Aged in New Town. Davies was born at Huon and had spent much of his life at sea. In an article published in Australian Tradition in 1965, Robson noted the song as one of five he taped. He described it as having "a sprightly tune" (but gave no further details) and told how Mr. Davies "sang all his songs enthusiastically and fairly loudly". I don't know where Robson's tape has been lodged but in 1988 Brad Tate, in his Down and Outback, published the song with additional verses and a melody he says was the one used by Mr. Davies. This was the tune to a British sea song, 'The Bold Princess Royal'.
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