The strains of the British patriotic anthem Rule,
Britannia! sound in various parts of Ulysses.
As Haines stands gazing over the bay with eyes as "pale as the
sea," Stephen thinks of him as "The seas' ruler." The phrase
comes back into his mind in Nestor, and more exact
echoes of "rule the waves" occur in Eumaeus and Cyclops.
The Citizen also alludes contemptuously to the rhyming
phrase: "That's your glorious British navy, says the citizen,
that bosses the earth. The fellows that never will be slaves,
with the only hereditary chamber on the face of God's earth
and their land in the hands of a dozen gamehogs and cottonball
barons. That's the great empire they boast about of drudges
and whipped serfs."
The foundation of British imperial power was laid with the
modernizing and professional organizing of the Royal Navy
under Samuel Pepys beginning in the 1660s. The British lost a
naval war with the Dutch in 1667, but the changes that were
underway ensured that they would suffer no more such defeats.
In 1740, the progress was reflected in a stirring air by
Thomas Arne, Rule, Britannia!, with lyrics by the
Scottish poet James Thomson. Thomson sought to promote the
newly “British” sense of identity brought into being by the Act of Union between England and
Scotland in 1707. His lyrics jingoistically justify
Britain’s power as divinely ordained, and proclaim that
“Britons never, never, never will be slaves.” (They do not
mention whether Britons may make slaves of other nations, and
the Citizen notes the further irony that the English
aristocracy have managed to subjugate their own people.)
The naval power proclaimed in this 18th century song was
solidified in the first years of the 19th century. Having
lived with fear of French or
Spanish invasion for more than a decade, the British saw
the threat vanish with the decisive victory of their fleet (27
ships of the line commanded by Admiral Nelson) over the
combined fleets of France and Spain (33 ships of the line
under Admiral Villeneuve) at Trafalgar. Not a single British ship
was lost in this engagement, which cemented the United Kingdom
as the world’s premier naval power and ensured its unimpeded
imperial ambitions in the 19th century.
For many years Rule, Brittania! has been performed
on the last night of The Proms, the eight weeks of daily
orchestral concerts held every summer in London, in the Royal
Albert Hall. An entertaining example, sung with arch pomp and
circumstance by Sarah Connolly in 2009, is posted here.
