A Life on the Ocean Wave: The Royal Marines Band Story

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a b Chamberlin, Joseph Edgar (1969). The Boston Transcript: A History of Its First Hundred Years. Freeport, New York: Ayer Publishing. p.93. ISBN 0-8369-5146-8.

One day Sargent and Russell were walking on The Battery in New York City watching the ships enter the harbour. This scene inspired Sargent to write a poem, which Russell then put to music. The song soon became popular in both the United Kingdom and the United States. [1] The music for the march is derived from two songs, both of which were composed during the first half of the 19 th Century. Both songs remained popular and in print until the First World War. Most of the march is taken from Henry Russell’s “A Life on the Ocean Wave”, published in the 1840s, and the short central section is based on eight bars of “The Sea” by Sigismund Neukomm, first published in 1832. He developed a series of school books, The Standard Speaker and The Standard Reader, which were used in Boston schools for many years. In 1858 he started a children's monthly periodical, Sargent's School Monthly, but by the end of the year it was absorbed by the magazine, Forrester's Playmate. [9] The tune, played by the Band of the Royal Marines, is played over the opening credits of the 1992 BBC television film; An Ungentlemanly Act, about the first days of the invasion of the Falkland Islands in 1982.

Henry Russell – wait for it! – was born at Sheerness on the Isle of Sheppey on 24 th December 1812, and died in London in 1900. As a one-time pupil of Rossini at Bologna and Naples, he went to Canada in about 1933, then to the USA where he was the organist at the Presbyterian Church in Rochester NY. He returned to England in 1841. In 1897 he wrote to Mr George Miller, the bandmaster of the Royal Marines Light Infantry, Portsmouth Division, telling him that “A Life on the Ocean Wave” had been inspired some 60 years earlier when walking on The Battery in New Pork Harbour with Epps Sargant, the poet. The scenes of ships moored in the harbour had inspired Russell to “set them to music”, and the song ultimately became one of the most popular in England and America. Henry Russell composed over 800 pieces and his book of reminiscences “Cheers Boys Cheer” proved to be an enduring and popular collection of his works. Epes Sargent was the son of Epes Sargent (1784–1853) and Hannah Dane Coffin (1787–1819), [ citation needed] and was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, on September 27, 1813, where his father was a ship master. [1] In 1818 the family moved to Roxbury, Massachusetts. From 1823 to 1829 he attended the Boston Latin School, but his education was put on hold while he traveled for six months to Saint Petersburg, Russia with his father. Upon his return he helped start the school's first literary journal, where he wrote about his travels to Russia. He then attended Harvard University where he contributed to the Harvard Collegian, a college literary journal which was started by his older brother, John Osborn Sargent (1811–1891), who became a successful politician and journalist. [2] [3] Career [ edit ] First masthead from Sargent's School Monthly, January 1858 Sargent's first play, The Bride of Genoa, premiered at Boston's Tremont Theatre on February 13, 1837, with a lead role written for American actress Josephine Clifton. Set in Genoa in 1593, the play was based on the historical Antonio Montaldo, a commoner who falls in love with the daughter of a nobleman named Laura Catelli, a role given to Charlotte Cushman when it played at the Park Theater in New York in November. [5] In 1837, he wrote the tragedy Velasco for British actress Ellen Tree. It was produced in several theaters in the United States and had moderate success in London. Velasco was critically admired by playwright Thomas Talfourd [2] and Edgar Allan Poe, who wrote "compared with American tragedies generally, is a good tragedy — indeed, an excellent one, but, positively considered, its merits are very inconsiderable". [6] Around this time, Sargent wrote the words to the song, " A Life on the Ocean Wave". At an 1851 celebration in Salem, Massachusetts, the Boston Cadet Band gave the new clipper ship Witch of the Wave a lively sendoff by striking up "A Life on the Ocean Wave" as the USS R. B. Forbes towed the new clipper out to set sail for Boston. [2]

A Life on the Ocean Wave" is a poem-turned-song by Epes Sargent published in 1838 and set to music by Henry Russell. Miller, Tice L. Entertaining the Nation: American Drama in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Southern Illinois University, 2007: 81. ISBN 978-0-8093-2778-2 At an 1851 celebration in Salem, Massachusetts, the Boston Cadet Band gave the new clipper ship Witch of the Wave a lively sendoff by striking up "A Life on the Ocean Wave" as the SS R. B. Forbes towed the new clipper out to set sail for Boston. [2] Before 1883, each Division of the Royal Marines had its own march, and even these changed frequently as new Commandants often introduced new marches. The DGRM called upon the Bandmasters of each Division to arrange a march, preferably based on a naval song. The Bandmasters of the Chatham, Portsmouth and Plymouth Divisions were coincidentally all German, and together with the Bandmaster of the Royal Marines Artillery they each submitted a march. The arrangement of the song “A Life on the Ocean Wave” was made by Mr Kappey, the Bandmaster of the Chatham Division Band RMLI, using Neukomm’s old song, “The Sea” as the trio section. This arrangement was authorised as the Regimental March of the Corps by the War Office in 1882 and by the Admiralty in 1920.The tune, played by the Band of the Royal Marines, is played over the opening credits of the 1992 BBC television film An Ungentlemanly Act, about the first days of the invasion of the Falkland Islands in 1982. Wilson, J. G.; Fiske, J., eds. (1900). "Sargent, Paul Dudley". Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. New York: D. Appleton. Sargent became captivated with the notion of communicating with "the beyond". He hosted many séances, and philosophical discussions. He published Planchette, or the Despair of Science (1869), The Proof Palpable of Immortality (1875), and The Scientific Basis of Spiritualism (1880). [4] Nineteenth-century American Children & What They Read". American children's periodicals, 1841-1860 . Retrieved July 3, 2008. a b c d Haralson, Eric L.; John Hollander (1998). Encyclopedia of American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers. pp. 376–378. ISBN 1-57958-008-4.

Underwood, Francis henry (1893). The Builders of American Literature: Biographical Sketches of American Authors Born Previous to 1826. Boston: Lee and Shepard. pp.199–201. In 1839, Sargent moved to New York where he was associated with a succession of newspapers and magazines. He was first hired by George Pope Morris to edit the New York Mirror. [7] Eventually he left the Mirror and went to work for Park Benjamin, Sr. as the editor of The New World. He published a biography on Henry Clay in 1842 and in 1843 started his own, short-lived, literary magazine, Sargent's New Monthly Magazine. In 1844 his collection The Light of the Lighthouse and Other Poems was published and then in 1845, he published his first novel, Fleetwood, or the Stain of Birth, a novel about American life. [4] In 1846 he wrote and edited The Modern Standard Drama, a seven volume collection of the most popular acting plays of the time. [2] Nelson, Randy F. The Almanac of American Letters. Los Altos, California: William Kaufmann, Inc., 1981: 30. ISBN 0-86576-008-X His monumental book, Harper's Cyclopaedia of British and American Poets (1881), was not published until after his death. Sargent died in Boston from oral cancer on December 30, 1880. [2] Works [ edit ] Sargent was a very respected literary figure by the time he returned to Boston in 1847, when he became editor to The Boston Evening Transcript. It was noted that under his care the newspaper "showed an increasing tenderness toward the Abolitionists". [7] In 1848 he married Elizabeth Weld (1820–1902); the couple had no children.