The Greenwich pensioner, together with the Sailor's glory

“The Greenwich Pensioner” is another sea song written by Charles Dibdin, this time for The Oddities (1789). The Royal Greenwich Hospital was established in 1694 for the relief and support of seamen and their dependents before the days of monetary pensions for naval service. It had a similar mission as that of the Royal Chelsea Hospital for old soldiers. The song was quite popular in England and America and appeared in sixteen songsters between 1796 and 1817 (Roud; R. Keller, Early American Secular Music and Its European Sources).

“The Sailor’s Glory,” a dramatic text of ten lines, most of them in ballad meter, barely touches on the dangers of the sea but focuses rather on the seaman’s patriotic response when “his country needs his aid.” The final line of the lyric is not consistent with the meter of the rest of the lines, suggesting that it was written to its own music. There are several tunes with this title, but none fit this particular text, which appeared in two songsters between 1806 and 1818 (R. Keller, Early American Songsters).