A New song, on the death of Robert Howell Robert Howell, an American citizen, pressed into the British service, and by Britons most barbarously murdered on being compelled to fight on board the Little Belt, against his own countrymen, in which unnatural conflict he lost his leg and thigh, struck off by a cannon ball, and died in a few hours after, of the wound.

“A New Song, on the Death of Robert Howel” is a dramatic protest poem against the continuing British impressment of American seamen and the lack of action on the part of the United States to do anything about it. Robert Howell was an American seaman who had been impressed by the British from the brig Martin out of Martinique. He was wounded by an American cannonball and died on HMS Lille Belt during her battle with USS President on May 16, 1811. A detailed description of the action was taken from an eyewitness and appeared in the Columbian Phenix; or, Providence (RI) Patriot on November 23, 1811.

The following week, the Phenix printed this song, with the headnote that the deposition had been generally read and that the “heart-rending circumstances . . . have produced, from a feeling American, the following exquisite and glowing stanzas.” They were copied from the Hartford (CT) Mercury. Coverly’s source apparently misspelled Howell’s name.

The language is dramatic and elevated yet uses a ghost, a literary device taken seriously by common readers of the time. Verse 6, “Go stranger, I bid thee go—go and cry to the brave and the free,” is repeated as verse 11, a strong poetic technique reinforcing the urgency of the message. The last verse also adds power to the charge, as the speaker, the ghost of Howell, fades from the narrator’s sight. With well-executed relief cuts, active narrative, and the supernatural, the text appealed to readers from all levels of society.