meter consisted of galloping tetrameter arranged
in quatrains rhymingaabb. Within the year it ran
through three editions and 4,500 copies; at six and
a quarter cents a piece Shaw’s profit was such that
he was ready to turn off another ballad as soon as
a fitting event should occur.
In the summer of the same year, 1807, Shaw
was riding to Portland to attend the funeral of
some of the ‘‘sixteen souls’’ lost by shipwreck on
Richmond’s Island, just south of Portland Har-
bor. Here was the event he needed, and as he
rode along he composed in his head a ballad
about the tragedy, writing the verses down and
completing them upon arrival. His diary account
sheds light on the methods of preparation and
distribution of broadsides in the period:
July 14, 1807.... I carried my song to the press,
and then returned home.... The next Saturday
I rode to Portland and seed [sic] to the fixing of
the type for printing the shipwreck song....On
Monday I took my songs and spread them
about, which met with great approval, and
returned home at night. The next day I spread
them in this town and in the afternoon I went to
Windham, then to Portland and stayed two
nights, and then took a circuit round to Saco
and Buxton, and came home on Saturday
night. This week I had 4500 copies printed
off, and disposed of nigh 3000.
The next week took Shaw to Bowdoin Col-
lege, where the ballad sold well, but where he had
some trouble with the students. He writes that
when the ‘‘college boys beset me devil-like...,I
told them if they did not mend their ways the
devil would have them.’’ Shaw was in the throes
of religion at this time and in 1808 became a
professed Methodist. Both in its text and format
(sixteen black coffins adorn the top), the ballad
under discussion reveals his preoccupation with
memento moriand the preparations for death.
Besides the appeal of religious fervor and morbid
interest in tragedy, there was a special reason for
the popularity of this particular ballad; Elezer
Alley Jenks, a young and enterprising Portland
printer, had been lost in this wreck of the schooner
Charles. It was probably Jenks’s partner, Arthur
Shirley, who issued Shaw’s broadside.
ThesamewreckoftheCharles,whichhad
produced Shaw’s rhymes, was treated by another
ballad writer, Ebenezer Robbins, in sixty-four six-
line stanzas. Robbins’ poem was set to the tune of
the ‘‘Indian Philosopher,’’ the music of which was
printed at the top. The poem itself, with its refer-
ences to Neptune, Hymen, and nymphs, is more
sophisticated than Shaw’s, but no better. Alter-
nating with scenes of the dying struggles of the
lost occur passages of theological speculation. Of
particular interest is a long passage setting forth
the writer’s view of infant salvation. He cannot
believe that the unbaptized children who were
drowned will be damned. His reasoning starts
with the beginning of things and the fall of the
rebel angels; then by recapitulatingParadise Lost
Robbins is able first to place the blame for orig-
inalsinonthedevilsandsecondlytoquote
Christ’s ‘‘love of infant babes.’’ About a third of
the poem is employed in establishing these liberal,
anti-Calvinist views, and one suspects that the
unknown Robbins was equally anxious with
Shaw to spread the ‘‘word’’ as he saw it.
In 1808 Shaw was again moved to publish a
ballad. With his son he attended the public hang-
ing of the murderer Joseph Drew in Portland,
and found the subject melancholy enough to
move him to write and the public interested
enough to buy what he was writing. Needless to
say, the end of Drew was made religiously edify-
ing. After this, Shaw was content to continue
filling his trunk with hymns and personal ejacu-
lations in verse until the public events of 1815
again took him to Portland. There, amidst the
celebrations over the ending of the War of 1812,
he brought out a broadside in two parts. Thirty-
two stanzas deal with the history of the country
through the defense of New Orleans, while the
second part treats the ratification of peace and
draws moral conclusions. Several stanzas attack
party bias and chastise printers for their bicker-
ing, advising them to leave off lying and strife
and to unite for the sake of the country.
In the same year the schoonerArmistice,
Baltimore-bound out of Portland, grounded on
Cohasset rocks, when five people perished. Shaw
got out his woodcuts of coffins and produced an
appropriate ‘‘Mournful Song.’’ This was printed
in pamphlet form, together with an anonymous
ballad about the eruption of a ‘‘volcano of Albay.’’
Altogether the eleven pages were designed to
appeal to the sailors of Portland, to whom events
in Albay and Cohasset were equally important
and interesting.
Only twice more was Shaw to peddle his
ballads about southern Maine, once in 1819
when Mr. and Mrs. Tarbox froze to death at
Raymond Cape in a severe snowstorm, and
once in 1824 for the festivities welcoming General
Lafayette. As a revolutionary pensioner himself,
Shaw was given some deference on this last publicThe Wreck of the Hesperus