A Ship Fiddler's Tale by Louis Arrhur Narron
Alone black man, a former slave and sailor serving against his will, stood on the deck of HMS Indefatigable. Cradling a violin under his chin, he looked longingly at the land only a league distant across the water. It could have been a continent away. He then played a tune, a cheerful hornpipe so that his fellow crewmen might tem porarily forget the monotony and drudgery of shipboard life. hipboard life in the age of sail was difficulr. Seamen made the best of their shared hardship in cramped quarters by pracricing knotring, gambling, crocheting, mending clothes, carving, drawing, making models, and telling stories, and a few played musical insuumems. Because of space resuictions, musical insuumem s onboard were limited to violins, bones, tambourine, spoons, fifes, rin whisdes, ocarinas, jaw (Jew's) harp, guitar-like instrumems and sometimes trumpets. Harmonicas, concertinas and banjos were imroduced after the 1830s and became popular. The
amateur musicians joined forces and occasionally formed "foo foo bands," whose unlikely name came from the "foo foo " (or "poo poo") refuse barges that plied China's Yangtze River. A common relief from shipboard drudgery and boredom combined music and storyrelling imo sea ballads and shanties. These rhythmic songs were also sung for entertainment, but primarily to help produce efficiency in repetitive tasks such as hauling on lines or pushing a capstan bar to raise an anchor. Forecasde shamies were quite diverse. Lyrics varied from musings about wives, girlfriends, and tall tales,
all the way to stories mocking the ship's officers. The ship's hierarchy tolerated the latter songs as a harmless way ofletting off steam over shipboard frusuarions while getting needed work done. Shamy singing was considered essential to aid monotonous grueling activities in the American navy, and Yankee sailors, often recruired from mercham vessels, were comfortable joining in with lyric and rune variations of their own. In comrast, Nelson's Royal Navy banned shanties , believing them to be incompatible wirh milita ry discipline. Midshipmen called out numbers to accompany labor in a type
lhis drawing ofthe Truro Philharmonic Orchestra is the only known contemporary image ofJoseph Antonio Emidy.
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SEA HIISTORY 145, WINTER 2013- 14