Recruiting with Music: “Come all you young fellows of Courage So Bold…”
Technically, although privateer vessels were neither owned nor manned by the state, they had to get authorization from the government before starting to attack enemy ships. (This was one of the things that distinguished them from pirates.) For example, a privateer sloop called the Montgomery — presumably named after General Richard Montgomery who was killed in the attack on Quebec — applied for and received such authorization from the Rhode Island governor on August 8, 1776.
But while getting the proper paperwork, Captain William Rhodes and the other owners of the Montgomery were also busy gathering a crew. Privateers and other warships had to have bigger crews than commercial vessels — partly to man the guns, and partly to take charge of any ships they might capture — so recruiting was important. In the Montgomery’s case, somebody went so far as to even write a recruiting song (with some atrocious spelling, most of which I’ve corrected here for the sake of clarity):
Come all you young fellows of Courage So Bold
Come Enter on Board and we will Clothe you with gold
Come Repair unto Providence and there you Shall find
A Sloop Called the mount gomery Shall Pleasure your minds — —She is all Rigged and fitted and So neatly trimmed
She Is molded Like ware work and She Sails Like the wind
She has all things Convenient and fit for our Design
god Prosper the mount gomery for She Sails Like the wind — —Captain Rhodes he Commands her and He Calls her his one
He will breeze her about me boys before he Comes home
there is Hessians and highlanders and Englishmen Likewise
we Will make prizes of them all me boys Until the Day that we Die — —
The Montgomery was successful in capturing several enemy vessels, so the owners and crew were probably able to make a good profit. All the same, I think it’s safe to say that the “young fellows of Courage so Bold” who joined the crew didn’t actually end up getting clothed with gold.
See what else happened in August 1776
Sources
- Naval Documents of the American Revolution, 6:116-117. Note: I took the liberty of correcting some of the spelling in order to make the song easier to read.