The Song of the Corsairs
In the age of sail, a French corsair was a privateer: a captain licensed by the crown to arm a ship and raid enemy merchant vessels in wartime. Corsairs were not pirates. They sailed under official letters of marque, followed rules of engagement, and were celebrated as national heroes when they returned to port. No city produced more of them than Saint-Malo, on the north coast of Brittany, and no corsair was more famous than Robert Surcouf, born there in 1773. Over his career he captured 47 ships and earned the nickname le Roi des Corsaires, the King of Corsairs. His most celebrated action came on October 7, 1800, when his 18-gun brig Confiance, with a crew of 150, boarded and took the British East Indiaman Kent and her 437 men in the Bay of Bengal. Fourteen British sailors were killed, including the captain. Surcouf lost five.
The French song Le trente-et-un du mois d'août, known in English as “The Song of the Corsairs,” is traditionally connected to this battle, but the details do not quite match. The song places the action on the thirty-first of August, off Bordeaux, with a corsair of ten cannons against a frigate of thirty-six. The real engagement was in October, in the Indian Ocean, with different numbers. The melody itself is older than Surcouf: it appears in a collection of airs published in 1581, and Davenson wrote that the song celebrates French corsairs generally, not any single battle. Stan Hugill believed it dated to the reign of Louis XVI. Whatever its true origin, the chorus leaves no doubt about its loyalties: “To the health of the King of France, and shit to the King of England, who has declared war on us.”
