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Chapter 4 - There Go the Ships -
From There Go the Ships by George Shirley

Page 57
We are islanders, and therefore more acquainted with the sea than other nations. Our boys will sail their boats on our ponds, or row on the rivers, or the ornamental waters in our parks.

One sings " The sea is England's glory," and the truth of this comes home to every heart in the British nation. The sea, all its surroundings and associations, are ever dear to Englishmen. Of the songs that are sung, the most popular are sea songs.
 
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"The sea, the sea,
The blue, the fresh, the ever free!"

Dibden stirred the very hearts of the people and others who followed in his strain. Who has not heard? -

"Here a sheer hulk lies poor Tom Bowling
The darling of our crew,
No more he hears the tempest howling,
Since death has brought him too."

Or -

"There she lay, all the day.
In the Bay of Biscay, 0!"

and -

"Hearts of oak are our ships,
Jolly tars are our men."

No calamity stirs the national sympathy more deeply than a gallant rescue, like that achieved by Grace Darling and her father; or of noble self-sacrifice, as the loss of a lifeboat crew, or hairbreadth escapes at sea. "There go the ships." Let us consider them.

One writes: "In our school-boy days it was in making ships that we tested the metal of the first

© Peter Smith 2009