William Main Doerflinger

Dean of Maritime Music Scholars

Dan Milner

William Main Doerflinger grew up surrounded by water. Residing during the school year on largely rural Staten Island, connected to Manhattan only by ferryboat, he had a view out onto the busily sailed Narrows through which great ocean-going vessels and coastal craft entered and left the Port of New York. At his family's summer home on Long Island Sound, where he learned to fish and swim, he became attuned to the rhythms of the ocean which lapped against the sea wall of the property. His growing fascination with the sea was hardened when, at the age of 16, he sailed to Hamburg on a merchant ship owned by a family friend.

Bill attended Princeton University, where he excelled at languages, worked on the school newspaper and first began to study folk songs. At the close of his third year, he traveled with a couple of friends to Nova Scotia on a trip that combined what would become his two life-long hobbies: magic and traditional song. The three young men hired a horse and wagon and went from village to village, renting the schoolhouse for the night. While Bill prepared for the evening's magic show, his pals covered the town with flyers advertising "The Impossible Possible" - William Main Doerflinger.

The magic shows went well and Bill raised enough money to stay on in Nova Scotia in hopes of collecting maritime songs. Much later, he admitted to his son, Tom Doerflinger, that he was at first very apprehensive about approaching total strangers to ask whether they knew any old fishing songs. His fears were soon dispelled. Setting out by bus down Digby Neck on his first day of collecting, he mentioned his purpose to the driver, Guy Morehouse. "Oh, like this?" said Mr. Morehouse, whose father had been a sea captain, and he promptly sang "The Ship Rambolee," about the shipwreck of the H.M.S. Ramillies off the coast of Devon, England in 1760. Bill never looked back after that encounter and the 60 or so songs that he collected on that first trip formed the basis of his Princeton thesis and would become the nucleus of his brilliant book on the folk songs of the American Northeast and Canadian Maritimes.

After completing his undergraduate degree, Bill left Princeton in 1932 and entered into the Depression's greatest growth industry - social work. Always caring and compassionate, but always with proper gentlemanly reserve, Bill worked first with families at The Association for Improving the Conditions of the Poor. Next, at the Children's Aid Society, he counseled boys and helped them find work. Many, he observed, had fled to New York City to unburden their hard-pressed parents. Undoubtedly, his experience as a social worker contributed immensely to his success as a folk song collector for William Main Doerflinger truly understood the totality of traditional song. He knew that folk songs existed because of folk singers and he loved them just as much as he loved the words and melodies of the songs and the history that created them. "I tried to find out as much as I could about their lives," he told The New York Times. "You have to get the general context of experience to which the songs are related."

Bill was also contributing book critiques to the Saturday Review of Literature during this period and, through that, was ultimately able to find work in publishing, the field in which he was to spend a full 40 years. In life, one thing leads to another and it was at The MacMillan Company that William Doerflinger met and fell in love with the woman who would become his first wife, Joy Holmer, but there were hurdles to be cleared first. For one thing, Bill had already accepted a graduate scholarship to Harvard; more importantly, Joy had already agreed to do relief work in war-torn China. Nearly a year later, in July of 1939, William Main Doerflinger crossed Canada by train and the Pacific by steamship. Arriving in a Shanghai harbor filled with Chinese junks, commercial vessels and warships of many nations, he was indelibly impressed by the bustling port. Sometime afterwards, as the pair traveled to Peking, a United States consular officer in Manchuria told them, "You have come here just at the right time. The Japanese have repaired a big breech in a railroad bridge about three days ago. They sent a test locomotive across the bridge and it fell through... but don't worry, the Japanese military engineers have worked on the bridge again so, by the time you get there, they should have finished." Bill later remarked to Tom Doerflinger that he made sure the windows of his compartment were open as the train reached that all-important spot. Bill and Joy married in 1940 and Bill took a job as managing editor of American Mercury magazine and started work on his classic book of maritime and lumbering songs, only to be interrupted by World War II.

In traumatic times, most couples bind closer together but the extraordinary, adventuresome Doerflingers took separate paths leading Joy to India on a humanitarian mission and Bill to North Africa and then to Italy working in psychological warfare with the Office of War Information. Reunited in the United States in 1945, Bill ultimately returned to publishing, editing books on a plethora of topics for a long and diverse list of authors stretching from Woody Guthrie to Sir Edmund Hillary to Francois Sagan. The autobiography of the prolific Oklahoma bard, in particular, was a major undertaking as the Guthrie family moved into the Doerflinger home and Joy co-wrote Bound for Glory with Woody. Following Joy's untimely death, Bill was comforted by his sister-in-law, Ann Holmer. She became his second wife in 1950. The couple honeymooned in Nova Scotia. It is not known whether any folk songs were collected on that trip.

An intellectual with an obvious love of adventure and a passion for fun, William Main Doerflinger wrote three books. The Middle Passage (co-authored with Roland Barker) appeared in 1939 and is a novel about the Guinea Coast slave trade set in 1812. The Magic Catalogue: A Guide to the Wonderful World of Magic rekindles the image of "The Impossible Possible" whose sleight-of-hand prowess bankrolled that first folk song field trip. His major work was first published in 1951 as Shantymen and Shantyboys; a revised edition appeared as Songs of the Sailor and Lumberman in 1972. In his Preface, Bill described the book as "a collection of songs that sailormen sang aboard deep-water windjammers, in the fishing schooners of the western North Atlantic, and in the West Indies trade; and of ballads of American and Canadian lumbermen." The actual collecting work took place over the 20-year period between 1930 and 1950 not only in the Maritimes but also in New England and New York.

Four chapters (including an essay) are devoted to sea shanties, the hauling (pull) and heaving (push) work songs that seamen used to coordinate their effort at tasks such as raising and tightening sail, lifting anchor and pumping bilge. They were the tools of the sailor, truncated simply with a cry of "high enough" or "belay" when a job was over or elongated extemporaneously to complete a task. "Can't They Dance the Polka" was a shanty sung at the capstan or windlass.

Shipmates listen to me,
I'll tell you in my song
Of the things that happened to me
When I came home from Hong Kong.

To me way, you Santy, my dear honey!
Oh, you New York gals, can't they dance the polka!

As I walked down through Chatham Street,
A fair maid I did meet,
Who kindly asked me to see her safe home,
She lived on Bleeker Street.

* * * * * * *

Just before we sat down to eat
We had another drink,
The liquor was so awful strong
I quickly fell asleep.

When I awoke next morning,
I had an aching head.
There was I Jack all alone,
Stark naked in the bed!

* * * * * * *

With a flour barrel for a suit of clothes,
I went down Cherry Street.
There Martin Churchill took me in
And sent me around Cape Horn.

Three more chapters deal with the songs and ballads sailors sung for entertainment as they gathered around the main-hatch or fo'c'sle head. While these songs could have been on any topic, popular or traditional, Bill Doerflinger chose to include maritime material only in this grouping. One ballad was "The Flying Cloud" -

We started on a voyage with a cargo full of slaves.
It would have been better for those poor souls to be going to their graves.
The plague and fever came on board, swept half of them away.
We dragged their bodies to the rails and threw them to the sea.

It was a short time after, we reached the Cuban shore.
We sold them to the planter to be slaves forevermore,
In the rice and sugarcane to toil beneath the burning sun,
To drag along their wretched life till their career was done.

We again weighed anchor on our ship and put to sea again.
Then Captain Moore he came up on deck and said to us, his men:
"There's gold in plenty to be had far over on the Main.
Now if you agree, my lively lads, I'll tell you how it's gained."

William Main Doerflinger wrote that "The Flying Cloud" was a favorite not only under sail but in lumber camps as well. While Bill may have gone out in search of sea songs, he recognized early on that many men of coastal New England and Atlantic Canada spent their summers shipboard and their winters in the woods . The work in both instances was labor intensive and largely solitary and musical ability was a highly regarded talent that could brighten many a dull evening. The first verses of "Peter Emberly," a ballad about an accidental death in the forest, highlight the musical affinity between sea and woods.

My name is Peter Emberly, as you may understand,
I was born on Prince Edward's Island, near to the ocean strand.
In eighteen hundred and ninety eight, when the flowers wore a brilliant hue,
I sailed away from my native home, my fortunes to pursue.

I landed in New Brunswick, in a lumbering coun-te-ree;
I hired to work in the lumber woods on the Southwest Mir-a-mi-chi.
I hired to work in the lumber woods, where they cut the spruce logs down,
And while loading teams with yarded logs, received my fatal wound.

Now, there's danger on the ocean where the sea rolls mountains high,
And there's danger in the battlefield where the angry bullets fly.
There's danger in the lumber woods and death lurks solemn there,
And I have fallen a victim into that monstrous snare.

Peter Emberly died in January of 1881 (orally transmitted folk song differs from written history in that details may alter as successive performers reshape a song) when the weather was so rough that no priest was able to attend the burial. Bill Doerflinger was struck by the story. A meticulous researcher, he told me he sought out the grave in the Catholic cemetery of Boiestown, New Brunswick where Emberly's friends had buried him. Bill's interest inspired others and, ultimately a granite headstone was erected at the site. Two chapters in the collection deal specifically with songs of the lumbering industry and another three chapters contain a general mixture of other traditional songs.

Much of the lore in Shantymen and Shantyboys was collected from retired seamen living in New York City. It was at Sailors' Snug Harbor on Staten Island where Bill located the man who was probably his favorite informant, Richard "Captain Dick" Maitland. Born in Manhattan, Richard Maitland had shipped under sail on the Black Ball Line packet Alexander Marshall and numerous other vessels. He was bosun aboard the General Knox in 1885. "I was on deck one night," he told Bill Doerflinger, "when I heard a Liverpool man singing it in the fo'c'sle. Yessir, that song hit the spot." Later, "arranged and adapted," it became an international hit. Although a closely related immigration song has been found a few times in Ireland, Bill Doerflinger was the only person ever to collect "The Leaving of Liverpool" from tradition; a little known fact is that he collected it twice, once from Dick Maitland and once from Captain Patrick Tayluer. Immortalized in its verses is the David Crockett. Built at Mystic in 1853 as a North Atlantic packet, much of her time was spent sailing between New York and San Francisco, sometimes calling at Liverpool on the return journey.

I've shipped on a Yankee clipper ship,
Davy Crockett is her name;
And Burgess is the captain of her,
And they say she's a floating hell.

Tough but fair Captain John Burgess was lost overboard in a South Atlantic gale on what was to have been his last voyage before retirement.

William Main Doerflinger, the dean of maritime music scholars and one of North America's great folk song collectors, died at his home in New Jersey on December 23, 2000. He was 90 years of age. He was sharp, dignified and enthusiastic until the last.

At a memorial service in Morristown, New Jersey on January 20th, 2001, William Main Doerflinger's family and friends, and members of the maritime and folk music communities paid tribute to an exceptional father, humanitarian and scholar. Selections from the Doerflinger collection, including "The Leaving of Liverpool," were sung by The New York Packet and by Stout.

Modest above all else, Bill Doerflinger's work received great praise in his lifetime. Carl Sandburg wrote of him in 1951, "His toil was enormous, his scent keen, his fellowship among his human materials fine and lovely." Stan Hugill, last of the shantymen, put it slightly differently, "Old man Doerflinger really knows his stuff."

________________________________________

This appreciation was originally published in The Log of Mystic Seaport, Spring 2002. The author wishes to thank Thomas Doerflinger for permission to incorporate remarks made by him at William Main Doerflinger's memorial service.

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