Don't Forget Your Old Shipmate
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"Don't Forget Your Old Shipmate" is a naval traditional song that was sung by British Royal Navy sailors in the Napoleonic Era.
It is recorded in Charles Harding Firth's Naval Songs and Ballads (1908) in a slightly different form from the one popularized in cinema, where its opening verse has been omitted, and with quatrain stanzas instead of couplets.[1]
It is sung in the wardroom scene in the film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, and is still sung aboard some surface combatant ships of the Royal Navy.
Lyrics
Firth version
The Firth version opens with the following quattrain:
- We're the boys that fear no noise,
- Whilst the thundering cannons roar,
- And long we've toiled on the rolling wave,
- And now we're safe on shore.
- Folderol, etc.
The rest of the song as presented by Firth does not differer substantially from the popular version presented below, but a few lines are inverted or have slight alterations to word order.
Popular Master and Commander version
- Safe and sound at home again, let the waters roar, Jack.
- Safe and sound at home again, let the waters roar, Jack.
- Chorus
- Long we've tossed on the rolling main, now we're safe ashore, Jack.
- Don't forget yer old shipmate, faldee raldee raldee raldee rye-eye-doe!
- Since we sailed from Plymouth Sound, four years gone, or nigh, Jack.
- Was there ever chummies, now, such as you and I, Jack?
- Long we've tossed on the rolling main, now we're safe ashore, Jack.
- Don't forget yer old shipmate, faldee raldee raldee raldee rye-eye-doe!
- We have worked the self-same gun, quarterdeck division.
- Sponger I and loader you, through the whole commission.
- Long we've tossed on the rolling main, now we're safe ashore, Jack.
- Don't forget yer old shipmate, faldee raldee raldee raldee rye-eye-doe!
- Oftentimes have we laid out, toil nor danger fearing,
- Tugging out the flapping sail to the weather earing.
- Long we've tossed on the rolling main, now we're safe ashore, Jack.
- Don't forget yer old shipmate, faldee raldee raldee raldee rye-eye-doe!
- When the middle watch was on, and the time went slow, boy,
- Who could choose a rousing stave, who like Jack or Joe, boy?
- Long we've tossed on the rolling main, now we're safe ashore, Jack.
- Don't forget yer old shipmate, faldee raldee raldee raldee rye-eye-doe!
- There she swings, an empty hulk, not a soul below now.
- Number seven starboard mess misses Jack and Joe now.
- Long we've tossed on the rolling main, now we're safe ashore, Jack.
- Don't forget yer old shipmate, faldee raldee raldee raldee rye-eye-doe!
- But the best of friends must part, fair or foul the weather.
- Hand yer flipper for a shake, now a drink together.
- Long we've tossed on the rolling main, now we're safe ashore, Jack.
- Don't forget yer old shipmate, faldee raldee raldee raldee rye-eye-doe!
References
- ↑ Firth, Charles Harding, Naval Songs and Ballads Vol. XXXII, "Don't Forget Your Old Shipmate" (Navy Records Society: 1908), pp. 337-8