Yankee chronology: or Huzza for the American navy

On February 15, 1813, the news of Constitution’s victory over HMS Java reached Boston. A play in the theater was stopped in the middle of the second act to announce the victory. On the twenty-fourth

a naval spectacle was exhibited, in honor of the anniversary of the birth of General Washington, and of the late brilliant naval victory of Commodore Bainbridge. At the close of the spectacle, Mr. Spiller introduced a song, called Yankee Chronology, being a recapitulation of some of the leading events during our revolutionary and present war. (qtd. in Porter, With an Air 303)

The text was originally inspired by the victory over the Guerriere. That fight was on August 31, 1812. By September ninth, theatrical entrepreneur and author William Dunlap had written Yankee Chronology; or, Huzza for the Constitution, a Musical Interlude in One Act to Which Are Added the Patriotic Songs of The Freedom of the Seas and Yankee Tars that was published in December. The play is a dialogue extension of the text on the battle between Constitution and Guerriere (see Hull’s Victory). In the action Ben Bundle, an impressed American seaman, escapes to join Constitution in the battle. Later, in New York, he describes the battle to his father, a stage Irish character who inserts comic interruptions to his son’s tale. This description leads directly into this song.

According to the paragraph at the end of the second column of this broadside, Dunlap originally had suggested that “he would be happy to add a verse to it for every brilliant achievement of the arms of his country, ‘till it should outdo Chevy Chase,’ (see Chevy Chase) in its number of verses.” Nathaniel Coverly evidently found “a resident of Boston,” perhaps his in-house writer “Mr. Wright,” to do just that and added four verses about the taking of Wasp, Constitution’s victory over Java, and Hornet’s victory over Peacock. The text appeared in seventeen songsters between 1813 and 1820 (R. Keller, Early American Songsters).