December 3rd – Nautical or nice…

Today’s choice is taken from the charmingly titled “The poets’ Christmas: a collection of carols, poems, and plays for Christmastide. With a plea for a village drama”, by W. T. Stead (1890). Seemingly on a mission to rehabilitate the carol, Stead observes that

“The aggrieved householder, whose residence is visited by a succession of peripatetic minstrels may with reason look askance at any proposal to revive carol-singing. But the pestilent mendicant has only gained possession of the field owing to the gradual disappearance of the genuine carol singer.”

I saw three ships, the still popular tune of peripatetic festive journeying, therefore makes for a nicely fitting selection from Stead’s collection:

“I saw three ships come sailing in

On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day;

I saw three ships come sailing in,

On Christmas day in the morning”

But have you ever wondered what it was like to be on that ship which came sailing in at Christmas? Alexander Gillespie, skipper of the “Anna” and then the “James”, who sailed from Elie in Fife through the last half of the seventeenth century, records Christmas 1679 as follows:

“Sonday, 15^th Desember – We came in with the Lisarde in the morning at 2 in the morning we was put to ane [mon] sail the winde Easte southe Easte

Sonday, 22 Desember we came into Falmouth the winde ENE

Friday, 27^th Desember we cam out of Falmouth the winde WSE

Sonday, 29^th Desember we cam into Plimouth”

So, no pudding and baubles aboard a working vessel, it seems. Though it may have been the case that the luxury items he would carry from Rotterdam to Scotland may have featured on one or two wish-lists in fancier residences. Given that Gillespie described his first ship “Anna” as ‘verrie lecke [leaky]’, perhaps it was always gift enough to simply come safe into harbour?

For more information on Gillespie’s journal: Reading the Collections, Week 37: Journal of Alexander Gillespie, 1662-85 – University Collections blog

Reference:

W.T. Stead, “The poets’ Christmas: a collection of carols, poems, and plays for Christmastide. With a plea for a village drama” (c. 1890; r PR1175.P4P7A)