This post is part of an ongoing pancocojams series on African Americans and West Indians chanties (shanties).
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2022/03/information-about-sea-shanty-collector.html for the pancocojams post entitled "Information About Sea Shanty Collector Stan Hugill And Information About Harding, A West Indian Man Who Was The Source For A Number Of Shanties".
Also, click the tags given below for previous posts and subsequent posts on this subject.
INFORMATION ABOUT STORMALONG AND LYRIC VERSIONS OF STORMALONG
These excerpts are given in no particular order and are numbered for referencing purposes only.
Excerpt #1
http://www.contemplator.com/sea/stormalong.html
Information
This shanty was originally sung around the pumps and later used as a capstan shanty. According to Hugill there is no doubt it is of African-American* origin. It dates to at least the 1830s and 40s.*
Hugill lists several shanties of the "Stormalong family;" Mister Stormalong, Stormy Along, John, Stormalong, Boys, Stormy, Way Stormalong John, Walk Me Along, Johnny (Storm and Blow) and Yankee John, Stormalong. Most of these were halyard shanties, but Mister Stormalong and Storm Along, John were also sung at the pumps. In most of the Stormalong songs there was a pattern of praising the dead seaman or praising the son of the dead seaman.
Lyrics
Stormie's gone, the good old man,
To my aye storm a-long!
Oh, Stormie's gone, that good old man;
Aye, aye, aye, Mister Storm a-long.
They dug his grave with a silver spade,
To my aye storm a-long!
The shroud of finest silk was made;
Aye, aye, aye, Mister Storm a-long.
They lowered him with a golden chain,
To my aye storm a-long!
Their eyes all dim with more than rain;
Aye, aye, aye, Mister Storm a-long.
He was a sailor bold and true,
To my aye storm a-long!
A good old skipper to his crew;
Aye, aye, aye, Mister Storm a-long.
Of captain brave, he was the best,
To my aye storm a-long!
But now he's gone and is at rest;
Aye, aye, aye, Mister Storm a-long.
He lies low in an earthen bed,
To my aye storm a-long!
Our hearts are sore our eyes are red;
Aye, aye, aye, Mister Storm a-long.
He's moored at least and furled his sail,
To my aye storm a-long!
No danger now from wreck or gale;
Aye, aye, aye, Mister Storm a-long.
Old Storm has heard the angel call,
To my aye storm a-long!
So sing his dirge, now one and all;
Aye, aye, aye, Mister Storm a-long
-snip-
The referent "African American" here may include Black people living in or from the "West Indies" (the Caribbean).
****
Excerpt #2
[Pancocojams Editor's Note: This discussion thread started 02 Oct 01 - 01:47 PM with a commenter Guest MudWeasel asking “. Who was this fella? I caught one reference to him as a "semi-lengendary" maritime figure.”]
1. From https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=39676
Subject: RE: Hist. Origins: Stormalong?
From: Harry Basnett
Date: 02 Oct 01 - 04:31 PM
Hi MudWeasel.accoring to A.L.Lloyd, Stormalong was "the blusterous old skipper who stands his ground alongside Davy Jones and Mother Carey among the mythological personages of the sea. Some took him to be an embodiment of the wind, others believed he was a natural man..." ( Folk Song In England, 1967 ). All the best, Harry.
**
2. Subject: RE: Hist. Origins: Stormalong?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 02 Oct 01 - 04:49 PM
I've wondered about this, too, MudWeasel. The lyrics in the Digital Tradition are one of several versions found in Stan Hugill's Shanties from the Seven Seas, which has about ten pages on this series of songs. What makes me wonder, is that the Stormalong mentioned in these songs does not seem to be the tall-tale character "Old Stormalong" I've heard about in children's stories. I think the legend may have been corrupted by Walt Disney and his ilk.
I found a story called "Old Stormalong, the Deep-Water Sailorman" in Botkin's Treasury of American Folklore. The story was taken from Here's Audacity! American Legendary Heroes by good old Frank Shay (1930). The story includes lyrics similar to what we have in the Digital Tradition*, so Shay apparently sees a connection. [Shay is best known for his book called My Pious Friends and Drunken Companions.
Here's what Shay says in his American Sea Songs and Chanteys (1948):
OLD STORMALONG is the only heroic character in the folklore of the sea: he was born, like the great clipper ships, in the imaginations of men. There is a legend, told in prose, of the time he was quartermaster of the Courser, the world's largest clipper. Stormy was taking his vessel from the North Sea through the English Channel, which was just six inches narrower than the Courser's beam. He suggested that if the captain sent all hands over to plaster the ship's side with soap he thought he could ease her through. It was a tight passage but the ship made it, the Dover cliffs scraping all the soap off the starboard side. Ever since, the cliffs at that point have been pure white and recent observers say the waves there are still foamy from the Courser's soap.
-Joe Offer-
* https://mudcat.org/@displaysong.cfm?SongID=5561
STORMALONG
Old Stormy he is dead and gone
To me way you Stormalong!
But now he's dead an' gone to rest,
Ay! Ay! ay! Mister Stormalong!
Of all ol' skippers he was best,
But now he's dead an' gone to rest,
He slipped his cable off Cape Horn,
Close by the place where he was born.
Oh, off Cape Horn where he was born,
Our sails wuz torn an' our mainmast gorn.
We'll dig his grave with a silver spade.
His shroud of finest silk was made.
We lowered him down with a golden chain,
Our eyes all dim with more than rain.
He lies low ln his salt-sea bed,
Our hearts are sore, our eyes wuz red.
An able searnan bold an' true,
A good ol' skipper to his crew.
No danger now from wreck or gale.
Old Stormy heard the Angel call,
So sing his dirge now one an' all.
Oh, now we'll sing his funeral song,
Oh, roll her over, long an' strong.
Old Stormy loved a sailors' song,
His voice was tough an' rough an' strong.
His heart wuz good an' kind an' soft,
But now he's gone 'way up aloft.
For fifty years he sailed the seas,
In winter gale and summer breeze.
But now Ol' Stormy's day is done;
We marked the spot where he is gone.
So we sunk him under with a long, long roll,
Where the sharks'll have his body, an' the divil have his
soul.
An' so Ol' Stormy's day wuz done,
South fifty six, west fifty one.
Ol' Stormy wuz a seaman bold,
A Grand Ol' Man o' the days of old.
From Shanties of the Seven Seas, Hugill
**
3. Subject: RE: Hist. Origins: Stormalong?
From: curmudgeon
Date: 02 Oct 01 - 05:09 PM
In "The Shanty Book" Richard R. Terry writes:
Who Stormy was is undiscoverable, but more than a dozen
shanties mourn him.
Joanna Colcord, in "Songs of American Sailormen" notes:
Bullen says of the next shanty, "it embodies all of the
adoration that a sailor used to feel for a great seaman, gives it expression,
as it were, though i have never been able to learn who the antitype of
Stormalong could have been. I suspect that he was just the embodiment of all
the prime seamen the sailor had ever known, and in this song he voiced his
heart's admiration."
Keep those silver spades polished -- Tom
-snip-
Here's some information about Bullen:
From https://www.qaronline.org/blog/2021/08/20/did-you-know-sea-shanties-were-important-part-sailing
"Frank Bullen (1857-1915), a shantyman and author, compiled a book of shanties titled “Songs of Sea Labor.” According to Bullen, lyrics changed quite readily and were often left up to the imagination of the caller. There would be a starting verse or two and fixed phrases for the chorus. “Many a Shantyman was prized in spite of his poor voice because of his improvisations. Poor doggerel they were mostly and often very lewd and filthy…much opportunity for laughter.” Many of Frank Bullen’s travels took him to the West Indies and the southern United States where he credits finding new shanties in the harbors."
-snip-
"Tom" is this commenter's first name.
**
4. Subject: RE: Hist. Origins: Stormalong?
From: Madam Gashee
Date: 02 Oct 01 - 05:48 PM
According to Stan Hugill "Perry calls him 'Old Storm
an' Blow', a name found more usually in Negro versions"
-snip-
Since the mid 1960s the word "Negro" is no longer used referent for Black people in the United States.
**
5. Subject: RE: Hist. Origins: Stormalong?
From: Mountain Dog
Date: 02 Oct 01 - 07:36 PM
A bit more on Old Stormalong and his exploits:
According to "A Treasury of American Folklore"
(B.A. Botkin, Ed., Crown Publishers, NY, NY, 1944) Old Stormalong was the
greatest, boldest and strongest of the deep-water sailors in the age of mast
and canvas. He first arrived on ship with his trunk bearing the initials A.B.S.
He claimed they stood for Alfred Bulltop Stormalong, but the captain took one
look and declared: "A.B.S. Able-Bodied Sailor. By your size and strength
they should measure the talents of all other seamen." And so it's been ever
since.
A man of prodigious size and strength, he was every inch a legend among his fellow salts. Said one: "He took his whale soup in a Cape Cod dory...his fav'rite meat was shark. He like ostrich eggs for breakfast and then he would lie back on the deck and pick his teeth with an eighteen foot oar."
Stormalong was a big man and he liked to serve on a ship to match. By all accounts, he was the most loyal of sailors...until a bigger ship passed his way. In a trice, he was over the side with his trunk and making steadily for his new berth aboard a better ship.
The last ship her served aboard was the Courser, "her rigging so immense that no living man could taker her in at a single glance. Her masts penetrated the clouds and the top sections were on hinges so they could be bent over to let the sun and moon pass."
Among other exploits, he was credited with making the Cliffs of Dover white, the result of soaping the sides of his ship so that it could just squeak through the English Channel. He also dug the Panama Canal by virtue of piloting his mighty ship across the Isthmus during a mighty hurricane.
Not coincidentally, Old Stormalong met his end as the Age of Sail was slipping beneath the waves, overtaken by the coming of the steamships, a mode of travel he could neither respect nor abide.
(and with that, I'll be a-weigh, hey!)
**
6. Subject: RE: Hist. Origins: Stormalong?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 02 Oct 01 - 07:46 PM
Nice summary, Mountain Dog. I was going to do that, but didn't get around to it. Still, I don't see the connection between the Stormalong of the stories, and the Stormalong of the chanteys.
7.
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 05 Apr 04 - 04:14 PM
Charles Nordhoff, in "Seeing the World," (issued under other titles at various times in the 19th c.) tells of the "mythical personage 'Old Stormy,'"
The foreman of the gang of English and Irish sailors who
worked at screwing cotton in Mobile Bay, the "chanting-man" (later
referred to as the chantey man with reference to another chantey) leads, and
the work gang provided the chorus:
Lyr. Add: OLD STORMY
Old Stormy, he is dead and gone,
Chorus- Carry him along, boys, carry him along,
Oh! carry him to his long home,
Chorus- Carry him to the burying-ground.
Oh! ye who dig Old Stormy's grave,
Chorus- Carry him along, boys, carry him along,
Dig it deep and bury him safe,
Chorus- Carry him to the burying-ground.
Lower him down with a golden chain,
Chorus- carry him along, boys, carry him along,
Then he'll never rise again,
Chorus- Carry him to the burying-ground.
Grand chorus- Way-oh-way-oh-way- storm along,
Way- you rolling crew, storm along stormy.
Nordhoff says, "The English and Irish sailors, who, leaving their vessels here, remain until they have saved twenty or thirty pounds, then ship for Liverpool, London, or whatever port may be their favorite, there to spend it all away, and return to work out another supply. Screwing cotton is, I think, fairly entitled to be called the most exhausting labour that is done on shipboard."
The copy of the book that I have (given to a boy) bears an inscription by a ship's captain, Capt. McNeil Bryd- "The romance of the sea is buried in the coal-bunkers." Dec. 18, 1868.
The line, 'Lower him down with a golden chain,' is present in a number of burying songs of both blacks and Appalachian and Ozark whites; where it originated (along with bury him with a silver spade) is unknown although it is often attributed to black slaves or to the West Indies.
Hugill remarks on its presence in blackface minstrel songs.
My guess is that it is from one of the Old Order white denominations.
8.
From: Charley Noble
Date: 18 May 11 - 08:34 AM
Then there's this old minstrel song which may be derived from a stevedore worksong or not:
As sung by J. Smith of White's Serenaders at the Melodeon, New York City, from White's New Ethiopian Song Book, published by T.B. Peterson & Bros., Philadelphia, US, © 1854, p. 71,
Storm Along Stormy
O I wish I was in Mobile bay,
Storm along, Stormy.
Screwing cotton all de day,
Storm along, Stormy.
O you rollers storm along,
Storm along, Stormy.
Hoist away an' sing dis song,
Storm along, Stormy.
I wish I was in New Orleans,
Storm along, Stormy.
Eating up dem pork an' beans,
Storm along, Stormy.
Roll away in spite ob wedder,
Storm along, Stormy.
Come, lads, push all togedder,
Storm along, Stormy.
I wish I was in Baltimore,
Storm along, Stormy.
Dancing on dat Yankee shore,
Storm along, Stormy.
One bale more, den we'be done,
Storm along, Stormy.
De sun's gwan down, an' we'll go home.
Storm along, Stormy.
****
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