Don't Forget Your Old Shipmate
"Don't Forget Your Old Shipmate" is a traditional naval song that has been sung by British Royal Navy sailors since the 19th century.
Versions
First version
The song was written by Richard Creagh Saunders, who enlisted in the navy as a Schoolmaster on the 11th of July, 1839. It was recorded in Charles Harding Firth's Naval Songs and Ballads in a slightly different form from the one popularized in cinema, where its opening verse has been omitted, and with quatrain stanzas instead of couplets.The first version opens with the following quatrain:
The rest of the song as presented by Firth does not differ substantially from the popular version presented below, but a few lines are inverted or have slight alterations to word order.