Captain Ward, the pirate-- with an account of his famous fight with the Rainbow, ship of war

A song text on the exploits of Captain Ward was registered in 1609 as “The Seamens Songe of Captayne Warde, the Famous Pirate of the World an Englishman.” The first line here was “Gallants, you must understand.” It was registered again in 1656 as “The Seamans Song of Captaine Ward” (Rollins, Analytical Index #2393, #2390). The texts of these ballads vary widely from each other although the story is generally the same. According to F. J. Child, John Ward was a seaman from Kent who turned outlaw around 1604 when he persuaded the crew of a British ship to turn pirate. By 1609, a reference to him and his associate as “late famous pirates” suggests that their career was over (Bronson, Singing Tradition 506). Ward’s story in verse was printed on many broadsides and in songsters and lasted in oral tradition in England and America (Roud #224; “American Broadsides” 1:4174; Dicey). Sir Walter Scott wrote that

Captain Ward & The Rainbow . . . is one of the many which have ever been a numerous & popular class in England. When the present transcriber was a boy he perfectly remembers it as one of the popular ditties which were learned by heart by the youngsters of the period, whose fashion it was to go from house to house disguised with shirts over their clothes and fantastic vizards which was termed in Holland guisarding and in England mumming.

Several eighteenth-century editions of this text, titled “A Famous Sea-Fight between Captain Ward and the Rainbow” have an indicated tune of “’Twas When the Seas Were Roaring.” This tune is attributed to Handel and was used for a song of the same first line in John Gay’s farce The What D’ye Call It in 1715. It was also used in Gay’s Beggar’s Opera (1728) and indicated for political texts as well (Simpson 719-20).