> Folk Music > Songs > Capital Ship / The Walloping Window Blind

A Capital Ship / The Walloping Window Blind

[ Roud 19559 , 24507 ; Ballad Index FSWB243 ; DT CAPSHIP ; Mudcat 24814 , 62496 ; words Charles Edward Carryl]

A Capital Ship (A Nautical Ballad, The Walloping Window-blind) is a parody of the song Ten Thousand Miles Away written in a verse style similar to Lewis Carroll’s by Charles Edward Carryl in his 1884 book Davy and the Goblin (p.89). The song was printed in St. Nicholas magazine for children, with the boxing glove chorus, in the 1890s. The Scottish Students’ Song Book of 1896 published this version, crediting St. Nicholas magazine but not citing an author.

Bob Lewis sang A Capital Ship on his 2003 album The Painful Plough. Vic Smith noted:

This wordy comical piece appears to be a parody. The only printed references to it appear to be eight inclusions in the Montreal newspaper “Family Herald & Weekly Star”’s Old Favourites column between the years of 1923 and 1959.

Debra Cowan sang Walloping Window Blind—collected by Helen Hartness Flanders on 27 August 1943 from Lena Bourne Fish of East Jaffrey, New Hampshire—in 2005 on her album of songs from the Flanders Collection, Dad’s Dinner Pail. She noted:

Originally a poem by Charles Carryl, this song was sung by children in schools at the beginning of the 20^th century. We’re not quite sure about the origin of the first two verses in Mrs. Fish’s version. Out of all the source singers that I had listened to, Mrs. Fish was my favorite. She sang with exuberance and a confidence that came through in the recordings. She contributed over 150 songs to the Flanders Collection and also sang for collectors Anne and Frank Warner. This song grabbed my attention with the line, “I’m off to my love with a boxing glove”.

Lyrics

Charles Edward Carryl’s poem A Capital Ship

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,
And it often appeared, when the weather had cleared,
That he’d been in his bunk below.

The boatswain’s mate was very sedate,
Yet fond of amusement, too;
And he played hop-scotch with the starboard watch,
While the captain tickled the crew.
And the gunner we had was apparently mad,
For he sat on the after-rail,
And fired salutes with the captain’s boots,
In the teeth of the booming gale.

The captain sat in a commodore’s hat
And dined, in a royal way,
On toasted pigs and pickles and figs
And gummery bread, each day.
But the cook was Dutch, and behaved as such;
For the food that he gave the crew
Was a number of tons of hot-cross buns,
Chopped up with sugar and glue.

And we all felt ill as mariners will,
On a diet that’s cheap and rude;
And we shivered and shook as we dipped the cook
In a tub of his gluesome food.
Then nautical pride we laid aside,
And we cast the vessel ashore
On the Gulliby Isles, where the Poohpooh smiles,
And the Anagazanders roar.

Composed of sand was that favored land,
And trimmed with cinnamon straws;
And pink and blue was the pleasing hue
Of the Tickletoeteaser’s claws.
And we sat on the edge of a sandy ledge
And shot at the whistling bee;
And the Binnacle-bats wore water-proof hats
As they danced in the sounding sea.

On rubagub bark, from dawn to dark,
We fed, till we all had grown
Uncommonly shrunk, – when a Chinese junk
Came by from the torriby zone.
She was stubby and square, but we didn’t much care,
And we cheerily put to sea;
And we left the crew of the junk to chew
The bark of the rubagub tree.

Debra Cowan sings Walloping Window Blind

A new ship lies anchored in the bay
While the captain and mate did dine.
And hearty was the grog that filled their mugs
But one thing disturbed their minds.
At the Mariners’ Inn while they both sat in
And the talk was quite unkind,
For amid their cheers they would often hear
A walloping window blind.

Chorus (after each verse):
So blow you winds high ho,
A-roving I will go.
I’ll stay no more on England’s shore
So let the music play.
I’m off on the morning train,
I’ll cross the raging main,
For I’m off to my love with the boxing gloves
Ten thousand miles away.

Said the captain to the mate, “It must be fate
For our ship is un-named you know.
And the walloping blind disturbs my mind
When the raging winds doth blow.”
“To hell with fate,” said the sturdy mate,
“Such trifles we will not mind.
O’er the waves we’ll skip and we’ll name our ship
The Walloping Window Blind.”

Now a capital ship for an ocean trip
Is The Walloping Window Blind.
No gale that blew disturbed her crew
Or troubled the captain’s mind.
And the man at the wheel was said to feel
Contempt for the wind that blow,
For it often appeared when the gale had cleared
That he’d been in his bunk below.

The bosun and the mate were very sedate,
Yet fond of amusement too;
And they played hopscotch on the starboard watch
While the captain tickled the crew.
And the gunner we had was apparently mad
For he’d sit on the after-rail,
And fire salutes with the captain’s boots
In the teeth of a blooming gale.