The Ballad of Robert Jeffrey

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This is a true story that Fran came across in the ‘Polperro Heritage Museum of Smuggling and Fishing’. Robert Jeffrey (1789-1820) was a young man from the south coast of Cornwall who was pressed into the navy and received extraordinarily disproportionate punishment for dipping into the ship’s stores, but survived to tell the tale. Synthesiser and pitch-shifted accordion are used to contrast the more traditional style of the lyrical content.

Jeremy Bunting (Vocals, Guitar) // Jake Rowlinson (Synthesiser, Backing Vocals) // Fran Rowney (Piano accordion, Backing Vocals)

LYRICS

In Polperro where the winding streets
Meet the wild unyielding Cornish seas
There was a lad born of that coast
Who’s name was Robert Jeffrey

In 1807 he was just a boy
And the word he’d barely seen
He was pressed aboard a navy ship
Though he was just seventeen

Captain Warwick Lake was a tyrant fearce
With temper like a blowin’ gale
And he flew into a fit of rage
When Jeffrey was caught stealing the ale

Jeffrey was left on an island bare
Naught but a rock in the blue
With nothing but a knife and a handkerchief
It seemed this island would be his doom

Jeffrey was there for a week or more
Eating eggs and drinking the dew
Until a ship bound for America’s shore
Rolled into view

Jeffrey was born to Massachusetts
His body was never found
And after three long years word of his tale
Reached the ears of old London town

Captain Warwick Lake was fired in disgrace
Court martialled for his cruelty
And Jeffrey returned to his Polperro home
Safe once more, beside the Cornish sea

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