Isaiah Thomas Broadside Ballads Project

Verses in Vogue with the Vulgar

Messmates 3 cheers for Captain Hull, and other officers and crew of the Constitution, Captain Hull's victory Captain Hull, commander of the frigate Constitution, took after a short engagement, the British frigate Guerriere, mounting 49 guns.

The text on Captain Hull’s Victory is in four lines and is similar in style, meter, and layout to Paul Jones’s Victory, both probably printed at the same time by Joseph White. The reuse of the phrases “to us they did strike, her colours pull’d down,” and the captain’s cry to “Fight on my brave boys” suggests that the author was familiar with the Paul Jones song as well.

According to Commander Martin, this broadside and Hull’s Victory both date the battle of August 19, 1812, between USS Constitution and HMS Guerriere, to August 20, but this version “adds (correctly) that the Briton hoisted three ensigns. The subsequent exchange of hails is completely fictitious. Curiously, the length of the battle is given as ‘forty minutes.’ The statement of British casualties is essentially correct, as is the appended statement of American losses.”

Additional Metadata

Date

1812

Place of Publication

Boston.

Subjects

Hull, Isaac, 1773-1843
Dacres, James Richard, 1788-1853
Constitution (Frigate)
Guerriere (Frigate)
Naval battles
Sailors
Ships

First Line

Ye brave seamen all, where'er you be.

Identifiers

BIB ID: 302161
OCLC Control No.: (OCoLC)ocm79278924
OCLC Control No.: (OCoLC)ocn191492665
AAS General Catalog URL: http://catalog.mwa.org/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=302161
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Physical Dimensions

29 x 23 cm.

Transcriptions

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Citation

“Messmates 3 cheers for Captain Hull, and other officers and crew of the Constitution, Captain Hull's victory Captain Hull, commander of the frigate Constitution, took after a short engagement, the British frigate Guerriere, mounting 49 guns.,” Isaiah Thomas Broadside Ballads Project, accessed October 22, 2026, https://collections.americanantiquarian.org/thomasballads/items/show/304.