BLOW THE MAN DOWN
Created on 23/12/2021Latest update on 28/06/2023
Artist: Tom Roberts
Author: traditional
Label: Sound Archive British Library
Year: 1908
Percy Grainger recording in Chelsea. English sea shanty about the dangers of capsizing. When sailers were cought in a storm, cutting down the man-o-war was sometimes the only way out. Roud #2624.
Covers:
- 1914:
Peerless Quartet [for Columbia in a medley of sea shantees]
- 1941:
- 1952:
- 1954:
- 1954:
- 1955:
- 1960:
- 1963:
- 2002:
John Short from Watchet, where Cecil Sharp learned it from, sang it as Knock A Man Down. The storyline is told by a Black Baller, sailor engaged by the Black Ball Line, the first transatlantic fleet operating a regular line between Liverpool and America at the dawn of commercial sail following Bonaparte's defeat at Waterloo.
