2.1 The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck

...being a look at a serious poem familiar to many who enjoyed comedy in the 1970s.

Here we are in the second series of Sixty Odd poems. This time around I will be publishing a mixture of poetry, some of it my own, and some of it pinched from others. The reasons for this are twofold; firstly, I don’t think that I currently have another sixty odd of my own poems of sufficient quality to sustain me for another full series and secondly I enjoy doing the essays, and there are lots of poems out there which I can use as springboards to essays, and which may even inspire me to write more poetry. And what better poem to start with than the 1826 poem, Casabianca by Felicia Hemans, known more familiarly by its opening line, The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck.¹ It was written to commemorate a real incident in the 1798 Battle of the Nile, one of Horatio Nelson’s great victories over the French. Casabianca was the young son of captain Casabianca of the French ship L’Orient, which went down in a blaze after taking a battering from the British Navy.

It seems to me that everyone had some passing knowledge of this poem back in the 1970s when I was a boy. Mainly because it was a comedy staple, a classic piece of nineteenth century poetry which comedians loved to satirise. It wasn’t Victorian, but Georgian, having been written when Victoria was just a seven year old child. I can’t remember ever having read it at school but I imagine that it was, or had been until very recently, a staple on the curriculum in grander, older schools than the comprehensive that I went to. In public schools populated by the likes of Billy Bunter or Jennings, where everyone studied latin and the classics, it would have been used as an example of the qualities that boys should aspire to - a level of bravery, nobility and obedience, that would drive a lad to stand on the burning deck of a ship after all but he had fled, because he had not been given permission to leave by his father, (who unfortunately wasn’t in a position to grant it, as he lay dead below).

It seems incredible today that the poem could have been intended seriously, but it came from a different age, and really was. Perhaps the first time that I came across any reference to it was in the pages of the Beano comic, when Walter the Softy started to recite it in the Dennis the Menace strip, probably only to be hit with an ink pellet fired from Dennis’s catapult². Walter also enjoyed singing “Oh for the Wings of a Dove” another 19th century staple, coming from a setting of psalm 55 composed by Felix Mendelssohn in 1844.

Apparently Felicia Hemans, was, in her time, one of the most famous English poets in England. Her works were outsold only by Lord Byron and she personally knew both Shelley and Wordsworth. She was a feminist, and wrote a number of pieces in which the female subject committed suicide due to cruel treatment by men.

And yet, her most famous work was cruelly treated by men, to the delight of people of both genders, back in the 1970s.

For example, Spike Milligan gave a more modern reaction to it with his words

The boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but he had fled -
Twit!

Eric Morecambe gave us…

The boy stood on the burning deck
His lips were all a-quiver
He gave a cough, his leg fell off
And floated down the river.

Me and my sister particularly enjoyed Ken Dodd reciting

The boy stood on the burning deck
His feet were full of blisters
The flames burned off his underpants
So now he wears his sisters

And not to be outdone, Bernard Manning contributed the immortal lines

The boy stood on the burning deck
Eating red hot scallops
One fell down his trouser leg
and burnt him on the ankle

... It completely missed his bollocks

Are there equivalent pieces of poetry and literature today? Are today’s children given the opportunity to joke about poetry and songs from well over 100 years ago? Does work from before this time feature in light entertainment and comedy? Or has the development of popular culture and the huge amount of references from more modern media completely replaced a wealth of our older shared heritage? Probably not entirely, most people still know something of Shakespeare, at least bits like “Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo”, and “Alas poor Yorick.” And maybe there is room for some Wordsworth “I wandered, lonely as a cloud”? I would be interested to hear from anyone with some real insight into this.

Meanwhile here is the original poem Casabianca, which may be horrendously old fashioned in sentiment and meaning, but is beautifully constructed. No wonder Walter the Softy loved it.

The Boy Stood On The Burning Deck

by Felicia Hemans

The boy stood on the burning deck,
Whence all but he had fled;
The flame that lit the battle's wreck,
Shone round him o'er the dead.

Yet beautiful and bright he stood,
As born to rule the storm;
A creature of heroic blood,
A proud, though childlike form.

The flames rolled on - he would not go,
Without his father's word;
That father, faint in death below,
His voice no longer heard.

He called aloud - 'Say, father, say
If yet my task is done?'
He knew not that the chieftain lay
Unconscious of his son.

'Speak, father!' once again he cried,
'If I may yet be gone!'
- And but the booming shots replied,
And fast the flames rolled on.

Upon his brow he felt their breath
And in his waving hair;
And look’d from that lone post of death,
In still yet brave despair.

And shouted but once more aloud,
'My father! must I stay?'
While o'er him fast, through sail and shroud,
The wreathing fires made way.

They wrapped the ship in splendour wild,
They caught the flag on high,
And streamed above the gallant child,
Like banners in the sky.

There came a burst of thunder sound -
The boy - oh! where was he?
Ask of the winds that far around
With fragments strewed the sea!

With mast, and helm, and pennon fair,
That well had borne their part,
But the noblest thing which perished there,
Was that young faithful heart.

1. My go to version of Cassabianca - like many of the poems I intend to use in this second series of sixty odd appears in one of the many books that I picked up for next to nothing, probably in a charity shop or other used book emporium. This one can be found within the pages of This England’s Book of Parlour Poetry, a rhyming Reminder of Half-Forgotten Verse (This England Books -1989) It can easily be found online for under a fiver if you care to look

2. Walter was the exact opposite of Dennis, he enjoyed poetry and other pastimes not traditionally identified as masculine, such as ballet dancing, picking flowers and generally behaving in effeminate ways. In more recent times his character has changed somewhat in order to avoid the charge of homophobia which has been levelled at storylines involving him. If Dennis was not guilty of homophobia, he was definitely guilty of ridiculing any aspect of the male character that shows sensitivity to fine arts, the beauty of natural world, and indeed any real emotional feeling. He probably still does all that, as many male characters presented to children (and in fact adults) still do.