Flash Nell This is both a choice recovery, and a puzzlement for it is unreported in standard collections of sea songs. There is an engaging, straightforward quality to the text of what appears to be a true last leaf of traditional foc'sle singing. There is a young damsel, a damsel of fame, A moll of the highway, Flash Nell is her name. She cruised in the Bay and loudly did bawl, "Rig out your long jib booms, your bollocks and all." Her dress she unbent; she brailed up her chemise, And hauled down her silk stockings my actions to please. She slipped my jib boom 'tween her lilywhite thighs, Saying, "Blimey, young sailor, oh, ain't it a size!" I rode her a watch and an hour or so more, Till my jib boom felt limber and my bobstay grew sore. I emptied my bollocks and felt I was done. No charge in the locker to fire off my gun. "For quarter, for quarter," to her I did cry. "No quarter, bold sailor," Flash Nell did reply. "You have the best quarters that I can afford; ["I have the best quarters that you can afford;?] So turn to with your fucking or jump overboard." In the last verse, the typist has seemingly switched pronouns. It is apparently the woman who has the best quarters. This offspring (?) of "Ratcliffe Highway" -- it shares verses with Hugill's version of that ballad in Songs of the Seven Seas, pp. 200-201 -- was learned about 1927 by M.D. Little of Long Island City, New York. Little contributed it to Robert W. Gordon's Adventure magazine series; it is now number 3915 in the Gordon "Inferno" collection of the Archive of American Folk Culture in the Library of Congress. In his cover letter, Mr. Little dated the song to the mid-19th Century, "when Ratcliffe Highway, London, was at its 'best,' teeming with whores and 'homeward bounders' from the Indians, China and Australia. 'The Bay' was a sailor designation for Tiger Bay or Pennington Street. It lies off and parallel with the Ratcliffe Highway."