"Barrett's Privateers" is a modern folk song in the style of a sea shanty, written and performed by Canadian musician Stan Rogers, having been inspired after a song session with the Friends of Fiddler's Green at the Northern Lights Festival Boréal in Sudbury, Ontario. Although Barrett, the Antelope and other specific instances mentioned in the song are fictional, "Barrett's Privateers" is full of many authentic details of privateering in the late 18th century. The song was released on the album Fogarty's Cove in 1976 and has since gained popularity as a drinking song, with cover versions by many bands. It also appears on later Stan Rogers live albums Home in Halifax and Between the Breaks ... Live! The song makes use of mixed meter, regularly switching back and forth from to time. It is regarded as one of the Royal Canadian Navy's unofficial anthems, the unofficial anthem of Atlantic Canada and also often heard sung at many Atlantic universities including (west to east) Acadia University, University of New Brunswick, Mount Allison University, Dalhousie University, Saint Mary's University, University of King's College, St. Francis Xavier University, Cape Breton University, and Memorial University of Newfoundland. Plot "Barrett's Privateers" is sung from the point of view of a young fisherman who, in 1778 at the age of 16, enlisted on “El Cid” Barrett's ill-fated Antelope, with the promise that the resulting trip would be a pleasure cruise with no violence. The Antelope is described as the "scummiest vessel [he'd] ever seen", and the song describes the many faults of the decrepit sloop, which had just received a letter of marque from George III to operate as a privateering ship. The sloop leaves on June 4 (the king's birthday) and takes three months to make it to Montego Bay, Jamaica. After a five-day layover, the Antelope returns to sea and encounters an American merchant ship loaded down with gold. Because of the poor state of the sloop, it takes the Antelope two days to come within firing distance of the American vessel, which ultimately turns out to be far more heavily armed than they are. The Antelope is capsized with one volley from the American vessel, and the narrator witnesses Barrett's gruesome death, when he is crushed like a bowl of eggs. The singer, who loses use of both his legs after they are struck by the truck of the mainmast, survives. The closing