"Song of the Mary White" is a ballad written in Broadstairs, England in the early 1850s.
It has been suggested that news of the loss of the Irish packet Royal Adelaide with 250 lives, on the sands off Margate on 6 April 1850, prompted Thomas White to present one of his lifeboats to his home town of Broadstairs that summer.
[citation needed] The lifeboat saw its first use on 6 March 1851, when the brig Mary White became trapped on the Goodwin Sands during a severe gale blowing from the north.
A ballad was written to celebrate the occasion, the "Song of the Mary White".
[1] The lifeboat itself was subsequently named the Mary White[1] in recognition of the strange coincidence of the recurrence of the name White in this story: Thomas and John the lifeboat builders, the name of the brig Mary White, and also the name of its captain, Mr White.