The Rhyme of the Three Captains

_This ballad appears to refer to one of the exploits of the notorious / Paul Jones, the American pirate. It is founded on fact._

. At the close of a winter day, / Their anchors down, by London town, the Three Great Captains lay; / And one was Admiral of the North from Solway Firth to Skye, / And one was Lord of the Wessex coast and all the lands thereby, / And one was Master of the Thames from Limehouse to Blackwall, / And he was Captain of the Fleet -- the bravest of them all. / Their good guns guarded their great gray sides / that were thirty foot in the sheer, / When there came a certain trading-brig with news of a privateer. / Her rigging was rough with the clotted drift that drives in a Northern breeze, / Her sides were clogged with the lazy weed that spawns in the Eastern seas. / Light she rode in the rude tide-rip, to left and right she rolled, / And the skipper sat on the scuttle-butt and stared at an empty hold. / "I ha' paid Port dues for your Law," quoth he, "and where is the Law ye boast / If I sail unscathed from a heathen port to be robbed on a Christian coast? / Ye have smoked the hives of the Laccadives as we burn the lice in a bunk, / We tack not now to a Gallang prow or a plunging Pei-ho junk; / I had no fear but the seas were clear as far as a sail might fare / Till I met with a lime-washed Yankee brig that rode off Finisterre. / There were canvas blinds to his bow-gun ports to screen the weight he bore, / And the signals ran for a merchantman from Sandy Hook to the Nore.