The Boston frigate's engagement with the French corvette Le Berceau, and Tom Bowline's epitaph

The Continental Navy was disbanded in 1784 but it was soon clear that a federal navy was needed to protect the country’s mercantile interests. Ten years later Congress passed legislation establishing a national navy. While a replacement for two earlier ships named Boston was not funded by this legislation, a new ship was built by public subscription in Boston to protect commercial shipping. The frigate Boston sailed on July 24, 1799. Her primary duty during this time included protecting American commerce from French privateers during the Quasi-War with France. After spending the summer off the US coast, she sailed to the West Indies, where she battled and captured a French corvette, Le Berceau, after a bloody engagement on October 12, 1800. As it turned out, the battle occurred a few days after President Adams had ended that war and declared peace with France, so Le Berceau had to be returned to France. In August 1814, while the British were burning Washington, D.C., Boston was intentionally burned at the Washington Navy Yard to prevent her capture (Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 20:269-74 and 65:163-68).

This song is in common language with much detail, perhaps by a local Bostonian who talked with sailors who were present at the battle. The phrases are closely modeled on Paul Jones’s Victory and the tune may well be the same.

The song usually titled “Tom Bowling” was written by Charles Dibdin (1745-1814) and performed in his short-lived entertainment at Covent Garden (there was one performance, on November 23, 1790) called The Oddities (1790). Coverly’s typesetter knew enough about sailing ships that he “corrected” the song title to Bowline, the name for the rope used to keep the weather edge of the sail taut forward. But Dibdin was actually using Smollett’s model sailor in Roderick Random as his inspiration, “Bowling” rhyming with “rolling” (E. Brewer 169). His original title was “Poor Tom; or, the Sailor’s Epitaph” and the text was a tribute to his eldest brother, Thomas, captain of a ship in the East India trade, who had died at sea.

Charles Dibdin was an English composer, dramatist, poet, novelist, actor, singer, and entertainer. The variety of his talent was astonishing but his personal life was continually dogged with troubles, both personal and professional. As a composer he was self-taught and his initial works were comic operas, many with Isaac Bickerstaff as collaborator. In 1778, after a self-imposed exile to France, Dibdin turned to writing strophic ballads, the genre for which he would be best remembered. These were often written for his one-man shows that he mounted in the 1790s called “Table Entertainments.” The songs he wrote and published at this time celebrated contemporary events or made fun of personal and ethnic oddities. The most enduring were his sea songs, for which he became famous during the Napoleonic Wars. Dibdin’s propensity to quarrel made his life difficult from the beginning and he died destitute and friendless in 1814 (Sadie and Tyrrell 5:424-27).

This song was written for an accomplished performer—Dibdin’s music is often difficult for ordinary people to sing. Even though it is a sophisticated song, “Tom Bowling” became widely popular and was printed in songbooks, songsters, sheet music, broadsides, and slip ballads throughout the nineteenth century (Roud #1984; Wolfe, Secular Music #2478-79; R. Keller).