There are several social or run ashore Dances now assosiated with the Royal Navy of which the following are in that number -

• Zulu Warior
• Dance of the Flaming Arseholes
• Swing Low Sweet Chatiot.

  (Please send your suggestions and contributions for explanation et6c.)

But primarily when, the average person thinks of Naval Dance they consider nothing but the Sailors Hornpipe.

Aboard ships, particularly the older wooden ships of sail, there is very little space in which to strutt your stuff and never is it the done thing to grasp an oppo, arm in arm to twirl around the deck in a twosome, though we do see photos of men in the Eedwardian Steam Navy practicing a bit before they set off ashore.

Generally, when a sailor dances, it is to express the joy of that particular moment, or because he needs to tap his foot etc. to the rhythm of the fiddler. Then he did so in the space he occupied.

Such inndividual dances were usually jigs in a three four time, and often took their name from the instrument that carried the basic rhythmic pulse of the tune, the hornpipe.

Jig or hornpipe, trhe sailor had no limitation on what he danced, indeed we see the American western cowboys in thje old |Western films dancing a right old ye-haw type of dance that would have been familiar to those at sea and fulfils manuy of the descriptopns of siuch dances as has survived in ditty books etc.

Often the sailor displayed his nimble footed skills that preserved his safety aloft in a storm, and his arms and legs performed many similar mimes in displaying his work.

 

That the occupational dance of the sea has been known for centuries is without dispute, but it was because of the Naval victories of the eighteenth century that it became particularly fashionable ashore, following performances of plays like the Tempest. . To fulfil the demand for its performance Thomas Potter Cooke of the Royal Navy in the French Wars and laterly at Copenhagen in 1801. Honed the art, by travelling it is said to every port in Britain to learn as many steps as he could.

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