Looking over the old concert programmes, I find that negro melodies (now called coon songs) were even then very popular, amongst which figured “Nelly Bligh,” “Poor Old Joe,” “Stop dat Knockin’,” “Oh! Carry Me Back” and others. The rest of the programmes were generally filled up with the old familiar Scots and Irish folk-songs, some well-known English choruses, the usual sentimental ditty, and amongst the sailor songs I find “A Life on the Ocean Wave,” “Cheer, Boys, Cheer,” “I’m Afloat,” “The Pride of the Ocean” and “The Death of Nelson.” Concerts were generally pretty numerous during a passage. As a rule each class had its own; then, to end up, a “Grand Monster Concert” was organised, in which the talents of saloon, house on deck, and steerage were pitted against one another.
Other diversions of this kind were plays of the class of “Bombastes Furioso”; mock trials, with the invariable verdict of guilty on the wretched culprit and the sentence of “champagne all round,” and of course debating, choral and other societies.
Then there were the usual high jinks crossing the line; and such occasions as the Queen’s Birthday, the “Captain’s Wedding Day,” etc., were celebrated by “a cold collation of the most sumptuous order” in the saloon and many speeches.
In the first cabin the living on these big clippers seems to have been uncommonly good for such a length of time at sea. Here is the dinner menu of 14th January, 1855, on the _Lightning_, when a week out from Liverpool.
_Meats_—Roast beef, boeuf a la mode, boiled mutton, roast veal, boiled turkey and oyster sauce, roast goose, roast fowl, boiled fowl, minced escallops, veal and ham pie, haricot mutton, ham.
_Sweets_—Plum pudding, rice pudding, roll pudding, tarts, orange fritters, small pastry.
_Dessert_—Oranges, almonds, Barcelona raisins, figs, etc.
Captain Enright was very fertile in raising a new amusement directly his passengers began to show signs of boredom. His favourite dodge was to appoint a St. Valentine’s Day, when a letter box was placed in front of the poop and twice during the day the darkey steward, Richard, who was evidently a great character, came round and delivered the Valentines as postman. He was always dressed up for the occasion in some extraordinarily fantastic costume of his own invention—and his antics and fun, quite as much as the contents of his postbag, kept the ship in roars of laughter and most successfully dissipated all signs of boredom and discontent. Here is one account of his doings:—