The Fringes of the Fleet
The Fringes of the Fleet is a booklet written in 1915 by Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936). The booklet contains essays and poems about nautical subjects in World War I. It is also the title of a song-cycle written in 1917 with music by the English composer Edward Elgar and lyrics from poems in Kipling's booklet. Kipling's booklet. In 1915 Kipling was commissioned by "The Daily Telegraph" to write a series of six articles on his view of life in less well-known aspects of the defence of the nation on its seas. These  were given the general title "The Fringes of the Fleet", and had three sub-titles "The Auxiliaries", "Submarines" and "Patrols", and published between 20 November and 2 December. Each was prefaced by a short poem which did not have a title itself. Immediately afterwards the poems and essays were re-published in a booklet called "The Fringes of the Fleet". Elgar's songs. In January 1916 Lord Charles Beresford requested Elgar to make songs of some of the verses in Kipling's booklet: Elgar chose four of them, and appropriately set them for four men's voices. Elgar gave different  titles to three of the four poems The work was dedicated by the composer "...to my friend Admiral Lord Beresford". The first performance was, at Elgar's suggestion, part of a wartime variety show at the London Coliseum on 11 June 1917, and the singers were baritones Charles Mott (following his performance in ""The Starlight Express""), Harry Barratt, Frederick Henry and Frederick Stewart. The show ran for four weeks with two performances a day and was a great success. In the production the curtain rose on a seaport scene, outside a public house, with the four singers in rough-and -ready merchant-seamen's clothes, seated around a table. The song "Inside the Bar", with words by Sir Gilbert Parker, was subsequently added to the cycle and performed by the same singers at the same theatre exactly two weeks later. The songs were so popular that later that year Elgar conducted the songs around British provincial music-halls (Stoke, Manchester, Leicester, and Chiswick), with Charles Mott (who had been called up) replaced by George Parker. For reasons which Elgar did not understand at the time, when they returned to the Coliseum at the end of that year, Kipling appeared and  objected to his songs being performed at music-halls. Kipling was upset by the report that his son John was missing. Elgar's singer, Charles Mott, was later killed in France in May 1918. Republication in "Sea Warfare". In 1916 "The Fringes of the Fleet" was republished by Macmillan, titled "Sea Warfare", with two other sections relating to the Navy and a final poem: