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AMERICAN SEA SONGS. 23
Then Dacres came on board
To deliver up his sword. Loath was he to part with it, it was so handy, O.
" O, keep your sword," says Hull,
" For it only makes you dull. So cheer up ; let us take a little brandy, O."
Come, fill your glasses full,
And we '11 drink to Captain Hull, And so merrily will push about the brandy, O.
John Bull may toast his fill,
Let the world say what it will, But the Yankee boys for fighting are the dandy, O.
The English celebrated their one signal victory of the war — the capture of the Chesapeake by the Shannon, off Boston Light, a year later — by a parody of this song, of a decidedly inferior quality.
One of the most notable events of the war was the cruise of the Essex, Captain David Porter, in the South Pacific, in 1813 and 1814. She did an immense amount of damage to the British whalemen, and the British ships Cherub and Phoebe were sent to capture her. After a rencontre in the harbor of Valparaiso, in which the captain of the Phoebe, taken at a disadvantage, protested his purpose to respect the neutrality of the port, and a challenge from which the British ships ran away, the Essex was caught disabled by a squall, chased into a harbor near Valparaiso, and captured after a |
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