46. William Hollander

Traditional, arranged and adapted by Robbie O’Connell ©1982 Slievenamon Music (BMI)

William Hollander, also known as The Flying Cloud, is a powerful anti-slavery ballad. I first heard it sung by my uncle, Bobby Clancy, in Carrick-on-Suir, back in the early 1970s. Since it was the story of a young Waterford boy, like myself, it is not surprising that I was drawn to it. The description of the brutal conditions aboard a slaving ship that lent it an air of authenticity also captured my attention. I had a feeling that whoever wrote the song must have experienced similar events firsthand but I was mistaken.

To my surprise, I discovered that the actual clipper ship, Flying Cloud, never served as a slaver. She was built in East Boston in 1851 and held the speed record for the voyage from New York to San Francisco for over a hundred years. She was also renowned for having a female navigator, a most unusual occurrence at that time. Her name was Eleanor Creesy and she proved her worth by her masterful navigation of the treacherous waters of Cape Horn on numerous trips transporting precious cargo at the height of the California Gold Rush.¹ It appears that the song is a fictitious account of slaving and piracy that was inspired by the temperance tract, The Dying Declaration of Nicholas Fernandez, published in 1829. It seems likely that William Hollander was not written until the 1850s. It was sold as a broadsheet ballad and the author may have used the name of the Flying Cloud to capitalize on the fame of that speedy clipper ship. ²

The song was very popular in Newfoundland where it was also known as Edward Hollander and William Anderson. Thousands of young men from the south-eastern counties of Ireland sailed out to the rich cod fishing grounds on the Grand Banks from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. Waterford was the home port for many of them, before they decided to settle in Newfoundland. So I wonder if the song originated there and made its way back to Ireland and England via the flotillas of fishing boats, mostly British owned, that made that annual voyage westward every spring. Regardless of where it originated, the song proved to have staying power and was recorded by many fine singers, most notably, Ewan MacColl, Louis Killen and Dan Milner.

For this recording I played the guitar in Open G tuning and double tracked it to get a kind of 12 string effect. Tommy Keane worked his magic with the whistles and producer, Tom Phillips, added some subtle synthesiser parts.

Lyrics:

WILLIAM HOLLANDER

Traditional, arranged and adapted by Robbie O’Connell ©1982 Slievenamon Music (BMI)³

My name is William Hollander,
As you may understand.
I was born in the County of Waterford,
In Erin's lovely land.
When I was young and in my prime
And health did on me smile
My parents raised me tenderly
I being their only child.

My father bound me to a trade
In Waterford's fair town.
He bound me to a cooper
By the name of William Brown.
I served my master faithfully
For eighteen months and more,
Til I shipped aboard the Ocean Queen
Belonging to Tramore.

And when we reached Bеrmuda
I fell in with a Captain Moore,
The skippеr of the Flying Cloud
From out of Baltimore.
And kindly he invited me
On a slaving voyage to go,
To the burning shores of Africa
Where the sugar cane is grown.

And after weeks of sailing
We arrived on the African shore
Five hundred of those slaves, me boys.
From their native isle we tore.
We marched them all along the deck
And stowed them down below.
Scarce eighteen inches to a man
Was all they had to go.

But the plague and fever came on board
And took half of them away.
We carried their bodies up on deck
And threw them in the sea.
Far better for the rest of them
If they had died below,
Than beneath the planter's bully, boys,
All along the Cuban shore.

Oh, we robbed and we plundered many a ship
All down the Spanish Main.
Left many a widow and orphan child
In sorrow to remain.
We fought ‘til Captain Moore was killed
With eighty of his men,
When a chain-shot brought our mainmast down
And we had to surrender then.

It's next to Newgate we were brought
Bound down in iron chains,
For the sinking and plundering of many a ship
All on the Spanish Main.
The judge, he found me guilty,
I was condemned to die.
So, young men a warning take by me,
Lead not such a life as I.

So, it's fare ye well, to Waterford
And the girl that I adore.
No more I'll kiss her lips again
Or squeeze her breast once more.
T’was whiskey and bad company
That made a wretch of me.
So, come all young men, a warning take
And shun all piracy.

1. Shaw, David W. (2000). Flying Cloud: The True Story of America’s Most Famous Clipper Ship and the Woman Who Guided Her. Can be found through https://openlibrary.org/books/OL7727383M/Flying_Cloud

2. Beck, Horace P. (1953). “The Riddle of The Flying Cloud”. The Journal of American Folklore. 66 (260): 123–133. doi:10.2307/537325. JSTOR 537325.

3. PRODUCTION INFORMATION:
Robbie O’Connell - Vocal and guitar
Tommy Keane - Whistles and uilleann pipes
Tom Phillips - Keyboards
Produced by Tom Phillips; Recorded at Ivy Lane Studios, Hopkinson, MA in 1981; Engineered by Larry Minnis;
Mixed at Ivy Lane Studios by Tom Phillips and Robbie O’Connell