A Particular account of the late distressing fire at Portsmouth

This broadside includes four sections, three prose accounts repeating verbatim the reports in the Boston Gazette of December 27, 1813, and an elegy. The first text has a byline, “Portsmouth, December 25,” and is a description of the fire, the buildings burned, and the fact that it was the third time a large fire had burned Portsmouth in the past eleven years. The second text, “Tribute of Gratitude” by “The Voice of Portsmouth,” gives thanks for the outpouring of help. The third text, abridged from the Gazette version, is an item on the criminals who took advantage of the situation. Below the prose texts are verses that were probably not intended to be sung as the meter of the lyrics varies. While most of the verses are in common meter, half of verses 6, 7, and 11, and all of 12, are in ballad meter.

The sheet must have sold well as Coverly printed a second version (now at AAS) with a bold title at the top of the sheet: “Portsmouth in Flames.” While the cut and content is the same, he spaced the narrative out more gracefully by varying the point size of the type.