A Capital Ship
(Tune)
A capital ship for an ocean trip
Was the "Walloping Window Blind"
No gale that blew dismayed her crew
Or troubled the captain's mind
The man at the wheel was taught to feel
Contempt for the wildest blow-ow-ow
Tho' it often appeared when the weather had cleared
That he'd been in his bunk below
 
Chorus
So, blow ye winds, heigh-ho
A-roving I will go
I'll stay no more on 
        England's shore
So let the music play-ay-ay
I'm off for the morning train
To cross the raging main
I'm off to my love with a 
      boxing glove
10,000 miles away


The bos'un's mate was very sedate
Yet fond of amusement too
He played hop-scotch with the starboard watch
While the captain tickled the crew
The gunner we had was apparently mad
For he sat on the after ra-ra-rail
And fired salutes with the captain's boots
In the teeth of a booming gale

The captain sat on the commodore's hat
And dined in a royal way
Off pickles & figs & little roast pigs
And gummery bread each day
The cook was Dutch and behaved as such
For the diet he served the crew-ew-ew
Was a couple of tons of hot-cross buns
Served up with sugar and glue

Charles Edward Carryl 
 
This wonderful nonsense song was a poem by American, Charles Edward Carryl. It's a good song for Cub Scouts to sing at Rain Gutter Regatta time or with any theme involving ships or travel.

The tune is one I learned as a young lad and I recreated this midi version from memory. It is based on the folk song Ten Thousand Miles.

Carryl was a New York stock broker who started writing fantasy stories for his own children. Two of his poems: A Capital Ship and Robinson Crusoe's Story are my favorites.

 At the time of his death in 1920, the works of Carryl were still in print and widely read.  If Carryl is to be remembered for any one contribution to American children's literature, it should be that he, more than any other American children's fantasist of the past century, found a key to successful nonsense fantasy so long thought to be the exclusive property of the British.

Douglas Street, 
The Dictionary of Literary Biography

Other poems by Carryl:

The Camel’s Lament
The Song in the Dell

Quote:

....there’s never a question
About my digestion—
Anything does for me.