Three Sea Captains

"The Three Sea Captains" is a set dance in Irish step dancing, and its title carries a well-worn piece of dancing folklore — that tune and dance alike were composed to commemorate the Battle of Navarino in 1827, where a combined British, French and Russian fleet beat the Egyptian and Ottoman navies during the Greek War of Independence. The printed record undercuts the story: the melody was already circulating decades before that battle, turning up in John Lee's Dublin collection of 1791 — its earliest known printing — and again in the Scottish musician Thomas Calvert's collection of 1799. In Ireland it is known just as readily by the plainer name "The Three Captains."