Song of the Day 1/24: Stan Rogers, “Barrett’s Privateers”

It’s said that if you walk into any bar in Nova Scotia and sing, “Oh, the year was 1778,” you’re sure to be answered, “How I wish I was in Sherbrooke now!” because everybody knows what’s become the province’s most popular drinking song.

You might have heard “Barrett’s Privateers” during the pandemic, when TikTok set off a fad for sea shanties that resulted in a lot of vocal groups, especially in the British Isles, releasing their own versions of these deck hands’ work songs. But despite sounding like it comes from the age of sail, “Barrett’s Privateers” didn’t. It was written in 1976 by Stan Rogers, an icon of Canadian folk music who died tragically a few years later at 33.

Rogers grew up in Ontario, but his parents were Maritimers and he spent summers in Nova Scotia among musically inclined relatives. He recorded his first singles in 1970, but his first album, “Fogarty’s Cove,” didn’t appear until 1976. Filled with songs about life in the Maritimes and on the sea, it was an immediate hit. “Barrett’s Privateers” proved particularly popular; it’s an unofficial anthem of the Royal Canadian Navy and the Atlantic provinces.

Rogers was inspired to write it after hanging out at a weekend festival with a group that sang shanties. He was frustrated that he didn’t know the verses, just the choruses. “I wanted the lead,” he said, “so I had to write it.”

Privateers were basically pirates, utilized by both sides in the Revolutionary War, legitimized by a letter of marque from the crown to raid enemy ships. Though the Antelope and its captain are fictional, Rogers filled the song with accurate period details (four-pounders were the favored cannon of privateers, light but with limited range) and nautical terms (“staggers and jags” was slang for what we now call delirium tremens). He took some liberties – Sherbrooke did not exist in the 18th century, and no privateer was ever sunk with great loss of life; most captured their prey without a battle. Also – a Canadian might be given a pass for this – the American revolutionaries were woefully short of gold.

Over the years Rogers shifted his focus from the Maritimes to the Canadian Great Lakes and prairie provinces for 1981’s “Northwest Passages.” The title track is almost as revered in Canada as the national anthem.

In 1983 Rogers was returning from a folk festival in Texas when a fire aboard his Air Canada flight prompted an emergency landing in Cincinnati. Rogers was among the 23 people who died, sealing his status as a legend. Biographer Christopher Gudgeon wrote,

From the ashes of flight 797, a new figure emerged: Saint Stan. He was an extension of Rogers’ Maritime Stan persona, only rougher and saltier still, with a heart of gold, a golden voice, and not a spot on him.

As many Stan Rogers albums were released after his death as during his life, and several of his songs have become Canadian folk standards. The Stan Rogers Folk Festival – Stanfest – is still held every July in Canso, Nova Scotia.

There’s one other place where singing “Oh, the year was 1778” is sure to get you an answer: Stephen Colbert’s late-night show. He broke it out twice in 2022, singing it with both Jack White and Michael Bublé.