I
Strung high that Union Jack
On a British Man o’ War—
The decks were clean,
The men well fed—
Off to seas from Albion’s shore.
Warped planks
And blood soaked boards
On that phantom ship of lore;
The Flying Dutchman with starving tars
Their walking bodies torn.
On the gangplank went a swab
A seaman named Ol’ Stew.
He hadn’t found his sea legs
So fell into the lagoon.
So, Ol’ Lieutenant Percy
Jumped into the cold-dark brine.
He grabbed this poor, good sailor
And saved him in ‘ knick-of-time.
On the Flying Dutchman
The mangled tars did cry,
“A man without his sea legs
“Will fall at once and die!”
The Dutchman saw a dinghy
They rid to it and hailed.
With the Jolly Roger high
They strung those victims pale.
Across the barnacled bottoms
Those live ones did get strung.
When brought back up the poopdeck
They were but bloody dung.
Their treasures were then stolen
Their women made concubines.—
The Dinghy that finds the Dutchman
Would have been better off to die.
The British Man of War, St. Brier
Found a dinghy, too.
They pulled up the cold bodies
And fed them lemon stew.
They gave them hot potatoes
And they fed them salted beef.
They nursed those wounds—
Were not so lewd—
To be brought back to Albion’s reefs.
There was a ship on fire
In the middle of the sea.
The Flying Dutchman found it
And raped and pillaged for fee.
Across the bows they fired
They made the women’s breasts bare.
They chopped to little pieces
All the men they had found there.
The St. Brier found a like ship
Stranded with no sails.
They brought aboard the survivors,
Secured a passage without fail.
They used whale oil to balm them,
They fed them with fattened meat.
They brought that crew asunder
To bring them back to Albion’s reefs.
II
One day St. Brier
Found stranded ship at sea.
Its flags flew Dutch,
As if the VOC
It signaled itself for peace.
The St. Brier sailed to see it
To bring it back to Albion’s reefs.
So! Open fired the Dutchman,
The Jolly Roger here now preened.
Grapeshot and musket balls,
Down fell seven on St. Brier
Which bow to bow would cull
As both ships set afire.
The ships cracked their brawny hulls
Ropes and masts were tangled
As men flung from sail to sail.
Guns there were, and great slaughter,
Dutch and Britt were slain.
The Dutchman’s crew were mangled
But the Man of War‘s wore red.
British troops in uniform
Did slash their swords in threes.
The Dutchman‘s hull caught fire
As the Brier‘s men cut free.
The Dutchman was near sunk
To swoon down into the sea,—
If not for Stew that outlier
The Brier would not be freed.
Brave Stew climbed the crow’s nest
He saw the ropes taught frill.
He took a sharpened hatchet
And hacked that thicket pill.
Like a lumberer up a tree
Stew hacked that Dutchman‘s mast.
It was near over, the Brier almost capped—
If the mast had not been snapped.
Stew held fast as St. Brier rocked
The Dutchman sank a tick.
The Dutchman‘s crew aboard St. Brier
Were sentenced on the Brig.
The old Judge aboard the Brier
There for this good thing
Who killed five of the Dutchman‘s crew
Sentenced each hang by string.
Ol’ Stew was given a medal
He was knighted by the Queen.
Ol’ Stew who had not sea legs
Was he who set St. Brier free.
B. K. Neifert 