DESCRIPTION:
Dirty Weather (The Ballad of Sir Clowdisley Shovell)

'Twas his emerald ring bewitched me -
On Porth Hellick sands he lay -
I grabbed a piece of driftwood
And I thrashed his life away,
And I have lived in agony
These two-score years and more
So I curse the day Sir Clowdisley
Lay choking on the shore.

"Dirty weather," said Sir Clowdisley
As on the deck he stood,
"I fear the sea may poop us
And it would do us no good.
Our longitude, it is confirmed,
We're just off Brittany.
And as I have defied the French
So I defy the sea."

But little knew Sir Clowdisley,
He was in for a shock,
For his ship, and all the rest,
Were just off Gilstone rock,
And though some seaman warned him
He had got the wrong location
He'd hung him from the mizzen
For his insubordination.

Association was first to strike,
Went down with all her crew,
The Gilstone took the Eagle
And it sunk the Romney too,
And as the flagship foundered
The hanged man was the last
To sink beneath the seething tide
And no one called "Avast".

The order-bawling admiral
Had such a store of breath
That he escaped the raging sea,
But could not cheat his death.
I saw him lying on the shore,
His emerald glinting so;
I spilt his brains upon the sand
With one almighty blow.
An emerald was no use to him
Spluttering on the shore;
It did him little good on deck
Of his stricken man-o'-war,
But for a Scilly islander,
'Twas a wonder to behold,
So that was what killed Clowdisley:
His emerald and his gold.

No woman can get rich from kelp,
Nor from a seal's grey skin,
And salvage from a merchantman's
An awful prize to win.
An emerald bought me solid stone,
And shelter from the wind,
But now it is my dying hour,
Forgive me, I have sinned.

Westminster Abbey is his shrine,
The bold Sir Clowdisley,
Who would not hear a wiser man
Who spoke too bold and free.
Bury me in an unmarked grave,
Good priest, so white with shock;
A better man than all of us
Feeds fish, by Gilstone Rock.

A brave man was Sir Clowdisley
Who dared defy the French,
Who feared not shoal, nor reef, nor sea
But died by this poor wench.
And if I had my time again,
I'd leave him on the strand;
His emerald ring I might have had
By cutting off his hand.

In fact, his finger would have done
His finger, and no more,
But a hatchet was beyond my means,
Alas, for I was poor.
His brains, they helped him little
When they were inside his skull;
I left them where they spattered
And they fed a passing gull.

You captains and you admirals,
Pray, heed a woman's word,
Some midshipmen tell you lies,
But others must be heard,
And hang them not for longitude;
It is a tricky thing,
And if you founder on the rocks
Cast off your emerald ring.

Words by Giles Watson, to a tune by Judith Reid, 2004: Dava Sobel's Longitude, Chapter 1. In fact, the story is almost certainly a malicious libel, both on Sir Clowdisley, and on the widow.