Dented Mug Pyratical Almanack #2
Dented Mug Pyratical Almanack
(v. 1, no. 2)
Opening Volley!
Thank you if you’ve made it through to this second newsletter, which means you have dipped your toes into Lusty Sails. So to speak. Anyway LUSTY SAILS #1: BORN UNDER A BLACK FLAG is now on sale on Amazon. Check it out here:
And for your viewing pleasure, here’s a preview of LUSTY SAILS #2: FELL ON BLACK DAYS.
And now this:
Desperadoes Under the Waves: The Final Voyage of the Flogging Molly and Her Infamous Band
Containing a Faithful Account of the Four Lads of Yorkshire, Their Notorious Compositions, the Use of Music in Acts of Piracy, Divers Curious Rumours Concerning the Mayan Drummer Xul, and Certain Prohibitions Laid Upon the Singing of “Straight Outta Nassau” in the Port of Kingston, Together with Sundry Marginal Observations & Reported Eyewitness Testimonies; Collected Anonymously, As Befits the Dangerous Nature of the Subject.
Editor’s Note to the Reader:
The following chapter is taken from a disavowed printing of the celebrated General History of the Pyrates, being an unauthorised THIRD Volume known to circulate chiefly among seamen, dockside booksellers, and other disreputable persons. It is reproduced here for the sake of completeness, with the customary warning that its contents are of dubious accuracy and questionable moral character, and that the Editor disclaims all responsibility for the actions of those who, upon reading it, should be moved to strike up a tune and seize a ship.
It is a truth universally acknowledged—at least among those seafaring Men possessed of either Wit or Experience—that a Pirate Crew, without the indispensable company of a Band, can scarcely be called Pirates at all.
Thus it was that when the Flogging Molly was claimed by a spiteful waterspout off the Isthmus of Panama, in the year of our Lord 1716—along with her cargo of silk and opium, lately relieved from a French merchantman—the world of piratical music lost at a stroke not only the vessel and her spoils, but also the infamous Four Lads of Yorkshire.
These worthies, whose fame had spread as far as Boston and Batavia, and whose melodies stirred the hearts of scoundrels from Nassau to the Barbary Coast, comprised one fiddler, one flautist, a Mayan drummer (shanghaied with little ceremony and less consent), and a harpist from Leeds called Allen.
Though their catalogue was meagre, consisting of but a handful of compositions hastily invented between storms and skirmishes, these few songs linger still in the memory of every proper sailor: Born Under a Black Flag, Long-Legged Sirens, and the notorious Straight Outta Nassau, to name but the best of them.
They were, by all surviving accounts, a rough and jolly Assembly, known less for technical refinement than for the ferocity with which they assaulted their Instruments. It is said they shattered no fewer than three violin bows in a single evening's riot at the Sack of Cartagena, and Allen of Leeds, the harpist, cracked his own instrument clean across the frame, though he swore the damage lent it a "richer tone."
Seamen swore their Music could drive a fair wind into dead sails, or call a squall down upon their enemies' decks, and more than one merchantman, hearing that dreadful racket borne over the waves, took it for the Devil's own consort and struck their colours without a fight.
Of their distinctive sound, one contemporary chronicler remarked—somewhat unkindly, yet with accuracy—that it resembled "the shriek of a gull caught in a hurricane, accompanied by the rattling of loose chain and the squealing of an ungreased capstan. With a fierce hangover."
Yet even in this, there lay a certain ragged charm, impossible to imitate and dangerous to ignore. The harp, in particular, when plucked with savage force by Allen’s bruised fingers, produced an uncanny wail that seemed to linger in the air long after the tune was spent, as if the ship herself had taken up the refrain.
As one gay wit observed, “Had they learned to master their instruments better, they would have lost their charm altogether!”
Rumours, as always, exceed the facts. There are those who claim that the Mayan drummer—Xul by name, and said to have been captured upriver from Campeche—could summon storms with the tattooing of his palms upon rawhide. Whether truth or tavern-tale, none can deny the coincidence that, upon the rare occasions when Xul took to the prow and played his thunderous rhythms into the teeth of a rising gale, the seas around the Flogging Molly turned black as pitch and boiled like a cauldron. Or so they said.
Of all their compositions, none remains so infamous as Straight Outta Nassau, a tune so bawdy and brazen that it was thrice forbidden in the port of Kingston, banned by name in Bridgetown, and formally denounced from the pulpit by the Vicar of San Juan. The song, which depicts the famous pirate Arabella Murdock and her strange adventures, is little known today. The chorus, however, remains intact, shouted with reckless joy in dockside taverns the world over:
I am an antichrist
I am a privateer pissed!
I'll cut you in the street
Then seal it with a kiss.
Nota Bene:
A marginal note appears in the account-book of Governor Archibald Lawton of Kingston, dated the third day of November, 1716, which reads:
"On this day was passed an ordinance forbidding, upon pain of fine or confinement, the singing of the so-called Pirate Ballad 'Straight Outta Nassau,' whether in the streets or the public houses of this town, the same being adjudged 'grossly inflammatory and injurious to the peace of His Majesty’s subjects.' It is further remarked that despite this injunction, the song persisted in the alleys and dockyards with increasing fervour, and the arrest of one Mr. Patrick Wren, caught singing it whilst abed with the cooper’s widow, did little to discourage its popularity."
As for their final performance, it is recorded—though no certainty attaches to the tale, as there were no witnesses—that in the last moments before the waterspout claimed them, the band assembled upon the quarterdeck, lashed to the mast with what ropes remained. With thunder splitting the heavens and the sea risen like a wall about them, they played not for fear nor favour, but for the sheer devilment of it. Witnesses aboard a Spanish frigate, itself narrowly escaping the storm, swore that the Lads tore through their entire catalogue in less than half an hour, from the rollicking strains of Born Under a Black Flag to the dirge-like Desperadoes Under the Waves.
Of this final number, only fragments survive, sung by those who claim to have known the original crew:
Desperadoes under the waves,
No preacher to bury, no stone for our graves.
We laugh at the storm and we sing to the tide,
For the sea is the mistress who'll take us alive.
Or, from “Born Under A Black Flag”:
Born under a black flag
Been cursed since age nine
If it wasn't for bad winds
There's be no wind to find
Hard seas and bad whiskey
Been my only friend
I've sailed on my own dime
Ever since I was ten
And so, they vanished—men, ship, and songs alike—leaving behind only the memory of their melodies, and the certainty that as long as wind stirs the rigging and salt stings the eye, the Four Lads of Yorkshire shall play on, forevermore beneath the waves.
And on that note I will leave you lot until next time. I am shooting for every two weeks. Bang, Bang.
Fair Winds!
Haze Johnson
