Britannia's Heart of Oak: Thomson, Garrick and the Language of Eighteenth-Century Patriotism

Summary

Immediately before the battle of Trafalgar, the sailors of Nelson's fleet were mustered to their stations as the drums beat out the rhythm of a song written by David Garrick for an earlier war:

Hearts of Oak are our ships, jolly Tars are our men

We ever are ready

Steady boys, steady

We'll fight and we'll conquer again and again.

Singing ‘Hearts of Oak’ was a communal declaration of courage in Nelson's navy. So was the performance of Thomson's ‘Rule Britannia’, which confidently declared that foreign ‘strokes’ served only to strengthen Britain's ‘native oak’. Both songs were made part of the ceremonial of war by officers keen to foster selfconfidence in the crew. Sung by men whose oaken ships were about to face gunfire at close quarters, they voiced their belief in themselves, in their vessels, and in their nation.

That ‘Hearts of Oak’ was sung was a testament to the enduring power and popularity of the oak as a symbol in eighteenth-century Britain. Nelson's sailors were bonding themselves to a myth of national character in which the navy, and the oak from which its ships were made, were seen as the embodiment of British manliness. Their hearts, as well as their ships, would be of oak, if the song had its intended effect.