Baltimore (Up she goes)

Baltimore/Up she goes from Stan Hugill

And he kissed her on the cheek, an' the crew began to roar, 
Oh, ho! an' up she goes! We're bound for Baltimore!
And he kissed her on the cheek, an' the crew began to roar, 
Oh ho! an' up she goes! We're bound for Baltimore!
No more! No more! No more!
We'll go to sea no more!
As soon as we reach port tonight,
We're headin' for the shore!

And he kissed her on the neck ...

And he kissed her on the lips ...

And he kissed her on the arms ...

And he kissed her on the legs ...

Etc

 Chorus of We parted on the shore from Francis and Day sheet music (New York, 1906)

We parted on the shore, we parted on the shore
I said, "Goodbye, my love, I'm bound for Baltimore."
I kissed her on the cheek, and the crew began to roar
Cheerio, dearie-o, we parted on the shore.

This sea shanty, usually known as Baltimore or Up she goes appears to be partly derived from We parted on the shore (RNV13522), a music hall song written, composed and sung by Harry Lauder.

The great authority on sea shanties, Stan Hugill’s described the shanty as follows:

BALTIMORE: a once well-known shore song … was a shanty very popular in German sailing ships, usually sung at the capstan when making sail …. It was never heard in British ships, and it helps to strengthen my theory that German and Scandinavian seamen adapted British and American shore-songs and turned them into shanties long after the art of ‘inventing’ shanties had died out aboard British and American ships…. Of course many of the final verses have had to be censored!

Hugill (2014) p319

Despite Hugill’s suggestion that the song was not heard on British ships, it has been widely collected from traditional singers in England in the 1970s and 1980s.

The shanty appears to have been created by combining parts of the chorus of Lauder’s song: .

We parted on the shore, we parted on the shore
I said, “Goodbye, my love, I’m bound for Baltimore.”
I kissed her on the cheek, and the crew began to roar
Cheerio, dearie-o, we parted on the shore.

Harry Lauder (1906)

with that of another well-known shanty often called Go to sea no more (RN644), which in one version Hugill gives as:

No more! No more! No more!
We’ll go to sea no more!
There goes Jack Rack poor sailor lad,
Who’ll go to sea no more!

Hugill (2014) p403

I suspect the process of converting Harry Lauder’s song into a bawdy sea shanty began amongst servicemen. I have not done an exhaustive search but I have come across three examples of bowdlerised versions of Lauder’s chorus in memoirs and song collections relating to the experience of servicemen during World War I and earlier:

• With the Diggers: 1914-1918 (1933). Privately printed mimeographed songbook of Australian rememberances of the Great War (WWI)
• Regimental songs, Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914-1915.
• Journal of the Royal Army Medical Corps, Volume 10 1908

I have included versions of all three songs, firstly Baltimore:

You can compare it to the the Harry Lauder song:

Here’s Go to sea no more possibly the origin of the other half of the chorus of Baltimore, sung by The Dubliners:

Sources:

• VWML entry
• Kilgarrif Sing Us
• Ballad Index Entry
• Steve Gardham A Veritable Dungheap, No 14, Bawdy Songs #2 mustrad.org
• Mudcat thread

Last Updated on November 8, 2023 by John Baxter | Published: May 19, 2023