The prologue of the opera takes place at an inquest into the apprentice's death. Billy Budd , of course, is an adaptation of Herman Melville's stirring novella of the same name. They were used to lighten the daily tasks of raising sails, hoisting anchors, and all manner of group efforts on shipboard. Such treatment must surely have turned many a mariner into landlubbers or at least prompted them to vow to go to sea no more. There is so much in this area to consider.
Sabotage plays a very important part in a number of folk songs about shipwrecks.
One song in particular, The Golden Vanity , concerns a ship which is attacked by Turkish pirates. The crew and captain panic and all seems lost until a cabin boy asks what reward he can expect if he sinks the enemy's ship. The captain offers to pay him gold and silver and, as an extra incentive, give his daughter's hand in marriage. Now sufficiently motivated, the cabin boy swims to the pirate ship and secretly bores enough holes in her sides to sink the vessel. But when he swims back to claim his reward, the captain refuses to pay him.