Inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, lines of verse inscribed in pen and ink fill the page:
I Twas post meridian, half past four
By Signal I from Nancy parted
At six we linger’d on the shore
With uplift hands and brocken [sic] hearted
II At seven while taughtning the fore stay
I saw her faint or else was fancy
At eight we all got under way weigh
And bade a long adieu to Nancy
III Night came, and now 8 Bells had rung
While careless sailors ever cheery
On the mid watch so jovial sung
With tempers toil can never weary
IIII I little to their mirth inclined
While tender thoughts rush’d o’er my fancy
And my warm sighs increase’d the wind
Look’d on the Moon and thought on Nancy
5 And now arriv’d that jovial night
When every true bred tar carouses
When o’er the grog all hands delight
To toast their sweethearts and their spouses
6 Round went the can the jest the glee
While tender thoughts [sic] rusht o’er each fancy
And when in turn it came to me
I heav’d a sigh and toasted Nancy
7 Next morn a squall came on at 4
At 6 the elements in motion
Plung’d me and three poor sailors more
Headlong within the foaming Ocean
8 Poor wretches! they soon found their graves
For me tho it may be only fancy
But love seem’d to forbid the waves
To snatch me from the arms of Nancy
These lines are from
The Sailor’s Journal, one of many popular songs composed in the cause of inspiriting sailors in the Royal Navy during the maritime wars of the late eighteenth century. The composer of
The Sailor’s Journal was Charles Dibdin (1745–1814), perhaps the most famous of maritime ballad-writers; he is remembered today for
The Lass that Loves a Sailor and, pre-eminently,
Tom Bowling. Turner has copied out the whole text, though his transcript differs from Dibdin’s original in some respects: verse 1 line 3 has ‘she linger’d on the shore’; verse 6 line 2 has ‘while tender wishes fill’d each fancy’; and so on. The final four verses are on the verso of this leaf (
D01804; Turner Bequest XLII 129).
For other pages of lyrics towards the end of this sketchbook, see the entry for the inside of the back cover (
D41426).
