Among other things, the ship was said to have drilled the course of the Panama Canal by slamming into the Panamanian coast, and to have gotten stuck in the English Channel, which required the crew to grease the ship's hull with soap.
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The name of Stormalong first appeared in a cycle of sea shanties that Stan Hugill, in his Sea Shanties of the Seven Seas, traces back to African-American folk songs of the 1830s and '40s. Bearing names like "Mister Stormalong", "Way Stormalong John", and "Yankee John, Stormalong", these sailors' work songs generally featured praise for a deceased seaman and for his benevolent son.
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The soap combined with the scraping of the hull against the Gray Cliffs of Dover turned them bright white.
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