A Capital Ship for an Ocean Trip

A Capital Ship for an Ocean Trip

Original Text

Charles Edward Carryl, Davy and the Goblin or What Followed Reading "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1885): 89-90. Internet Archive

1A capital ship for an ocean trip
2    Was "The Walloping Window-blind;"
3No gale that blew dismayed her crew
4    Or troubled the captain’s mind.
5The man at the wheel was taught to feel
6    Contempt for the wildest blow,
7And it often appeared, when the weather had cleared,
8    That he’d been in his bunk below.
9The boatswain’s mate was very sedate,
10    Yet fond of amusement too;
11And he played hop-scotch with the starboard watch,
12    While the gunner we had was apparently mad,
13And the gunner we had was apparently mad,
14    For he sat on the after-rail,
15And fired salutes with the captain’s boots,
16    In the teeth of the booming gale.
17The captain sat in a commodore’s hat,
18    And dined, in a royal way,
19On toasted pigs and pickles and figs
21But the cook was Dutch, and behaved as such;
22    For the food that he gave the crew
23Was a number of tons of hot-cross buns,
24    Chopped up with sugar and glue.
25And we all felt ill as mariners will,
26    On a diet that’s cheap and rude;
27And we shivered and shook as the dipped the cook
28    In a tub of his gluesome food.
29Then nautical pride we laid aside,
30    And we cast the vessel ashore
31On the Gulliby Isles, where the Poohpooh smiles,
32    And the Anagazanders roar.
33Composed of sand was that favored land,
34    And trimmed with cinnamon straws;
35And pink and blue was the pleasing hue
36    Of the Tickletoeteaser’s claws.
37And we sat on the edge of a sandy ledge
38    And shot at the whistling bee;
39And the Binnacle-bats wore water-proof hats
40    As they dance in the sounding sea.
41On rubagub bark, from dawn to dark,
42    We fed, till we all had grown
43Uncommonly shrunk, -- when a Chinese junk
44    Came by from the torriby zone.
45She was stubby and square, but we didn’t much care,
46    And we cheerily put to sea;
47And we left the crew of the junk to chew
48    The bark of the rubagub tree.

Notes

20] gummery bread: "bread stuffed with molasses" (93). Back to Line
Publication Start Year
1884
RPO poem Editors
Data entry: Sharine Leung
RPO Edition
2012
Rhyme