Roast Beef of Old England: Traditional Sailor Songs from Jack Aubrey’s Navy

Jerry Bryant is credited on lead vocal, pennywhistle, and bones. Starboard Mess is Eric Bryant, Sheldon Campbell, Peter Constrastano, Cliff Haslam, Geoff Kaudman, Payton Turpin, and Ron Grosslein (fiddle, fife, flute).

This album is themed around Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series of historical fiction books set during the Napoleonic Wars. Thirteen of the songs are cited in the books, and the other 11 have historical backing that would place them near the early 1800s.

Tracklist:

  1. Spanish Ladies
  2. A Jolly Sailor’s True Description of a Man-of-War
  3. Adieu, Sweet Lovely Nancy
  4. St. Patrick’s Day
  5. Warlike Seamen
  6. The First of June
  7. Drops of Brandy
  8. Roast Beef of Old England
  9. Heart of Oak
  10. Nancy Dawson
  11. Ben Backstay
  12. Sailor’s Hornpipe/Rickett’s Hornpipe
  13. Bay of Biscay-o
  14. The Battle of the Nile
  15. Nelson’s Victory/Hull’s Victory
  16. The Banks of the Nile/Sailor’s Cravat
  17. A New Sea Song (Sweethearts and Wives)
  18. Pleasant and Delightful
  19. Captain Barton’s Distress on the Lichfield
  20. Chevy Chast
  21. The Shannon and the Chesapeake
  22. Distressed Men-of-War
  23. Sailor’s Jacket
  24. Don’t Forget Your Old Shipmate