Andrew Rose

Although British in origin, this song was popular among American crews. After a British sailor sung Blow, Boys, Blow, which notes the brutalities aboard Yankee ships, a Yankee sailor may have countered with this ballad.

The ballad tells a true story. In May 1857 the Sunderland barque Martha and Jane sailed from Barbados for Liverpool. Her master, Henry Rogers, and his two mates, William Miles and Charles Edward Seymour, tormented the seaman Andrew Rose, who had shipped at Barbados, until he died on June 5. All three were tried for murder at the Liverpool Assizes in August 1857 and sentenced to death. The mates’ sentences were commuted to penal servitude for life, and Rogers was hanged outside Kirkdale Gaol on September 12, 1857. Broadsides of the case were printed that year, including one in Welsh.

The album notes of the compilation CD Sailor’s Songs and Sea Shanties tell it differently:

The trial of Captain James Rogers for cruelly misusing members of his crew took place in 1849. Following the trial, this ballad was made by an unknown London pub poet and issued by the broadside printers A Ryle & Co of Seven Dials. Senseless cruelty was all too common on English ships, even as late as the 1850s.

The name and date there are wrong. The broadsides, newspapers and prison records of 1857 all name the captain as Henry Rogers and put the trial and hanging in that year.