ABSTRACT
Love and loyalty were major themes in ballads about shipwreck. This reflected to some extent the centuries-old popularity of stories about courtship, sex, marriage, domesticity, and family within the broadside tradition generally and especially in songs about sailors and the sea. While a number of these shipwreck ballads considered the affective bonds of family, including the feelings of children for shipwrecked fathers, the majority featured young couples torn apart by stormy seas and focused firmly on the subject of romantic love. Indeed, in many such ballads the main message appears to be that true love was a prize worth struggling and suffering for. Shipwrecks in these ballads often functioned more as dramatic devices than core story lines: they were simply the pinnacle of a whole series of challenges that had to be overcome if a young couple were to eventually marry and achieve a state of bliss.
