"Song of the Mary White" is a ballad written in Broadstairs, England in the early 1850s.
<!-- from the article Broadstairs -->
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. 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".
The lifeboat itself was subsequently named the Mary White