The Royal Charter - 1859

Australia - back across the sea
The Royal Charter brought the people home
To Liverpool where they will always be
Remembered well although they didn’t come

One autumn night in 1859
A storm blew up - the worst that century
The Royal Charter wrecked just off the coast
Near Dulas Bay and close to Red Wharf Bay

Joe Rodgers swam to bring a line ashore
He fought the waves and rocks that dreadful day
The Royal Charter wrecked just off the coast
Near Dulas Bay and close to Red Wharf Bay

A bosun’s chair was rigged to save the lives
A human chain was paid out in the sea
The Royal Charter wrecked just off the coast
Near Dulas Bay and close to Red Wharf Bay

Just forty-one were rescued from the ship
Four hundred - near five hundred - died that day
The Royal Charter wrecked just off the coast
Near Dulas Bay and close to Red Wharf Bay

The Moelfre twenty-eight men were so brave
The Rector Steven Roose Hughes broke his heart
Recording all the ones they could not save
For relatives who waited at the port

The Royal Charter - full of lives and gold
In sight of land was wrecked by raging wave
The bodies washed ashore were dead and cold
Along the coast - with no more left to save (rpt)

Moral
Returning home from Goldfields in the south
Don’t sew the weight of gold in hem or seam
Shipwrecked you’ll drown as water fills your mouth
Your ‘rich return’ a thwarted distant dream

C 2002 Charlotte Peters Rock

2009 is the 150th Anniversary of the Royal Charter Storm, when numerous boats and ships were sunk on the night of 26th/26th October 1859. The Royal Charter ran aground on the rocks at Moelfre, on the north coast of Anglesey in North Wales. It was returning to Liverpool from the Goldfields of Australia. The Royal Charter was one of he most modern ships in the world when it was built on Deeside in 1854.
see:
Great Orme site click 'back' to return

MPs and expensive manure

Become a politician
Buy the vote - stick in the pin
Trotters in the trough and snout in swill
Late Lordling with ambition
Taking all the public in
Ruling by corruption greed and skill

And here’s the way to gobble up the truffle
And there’s the way to greedy-grasp the cake
Hope no-one understands – its no mere trifle
This murky long career is on the take

Shout loudly of sedition
Blame the rest and lie to win
Servant of the people – mainly you
Colluding with rendition
Cover-up in lies and spin
Keep your secrets out of public view

And here’s the way to gobble up the truffle
And there’s the way to greedy-grasp the cake
Hope no-one understands – its no mere trifle
This murky long career is on the take

Line up – in competition
Public theft ‘is no great sin’
Change the law to make your theft ‘their will’
Creep silent round suspicion
‘Brass it out’ – take aim – begin
Blame the rest – and get in with your bill

And here’s the way to gobble up the truffle
And there’s the way to greedy-grasp the cake
Hope no-one understands – its no mere trifle
This murky long career is on the take

Expensive recognition
Means you take on the chin
Trough and swill - and elevation too
Ermine-clad ‘patrician’
Still the cash – and still the gin
Now the right to trade your title too

And here’s the way to gobble up the truffle
And there’s the way to greedy-grasp the cake
Hope no-one understands – its no mere trifle
This murky long career is on the take

(Repeat for as long as you can return to office)
© Charlotte Peters Rock