"The Banks of the Nile" is an Irish song in C Major and 3/4 time. The Battle of the Nile (also known as the Battle of Aboukir Bay) was a major naval battle fought between the British Royal Navy and the Navy of the French Republic at Aboukir Bay on the Mediterranean coast off the Nile Delta of Egypt from the 1st to the 3rd of August 1798. The French fleet carried an expeditionary force under General Napoleon Bonaparte. The British fleet was led in the battle by Rear-Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson; they decisively defeated the French under Vice-Admiral François-Paul Brueys d'Aigalliers. In this song a girl wants to go to sea with her man, who prevents her by taking shelter behind naval regulations. Other sailors must have been less persuasive or less obedient, since women were by no means strangers to navy ships in Nelson's day. At the battle of the Nile itself, women helped with carrying powder to the guns; some were wounded and one gave birth to a baby. It appears in the Roud Folksong Index as #950. It was printed in Laws' American Ballads from British Broadsides: A guide for students and collectors of traditional song (1957), Greig's Folk-Song in Buchan and Folk-Song of the North-East (1963), The Greig-Duncan Folk Song Collection, Volume 1 (1981), Belden's Ballads and Songs Collected by the Missouri Folk-Lore Society (1955), Randolph's Ozark Folksongs (1982), Ord's Bothy Songs and Ballads (1930), Creighton's Maritime Folk Songs (1962), Grigson's The Penguin Book of Ballads (1975) and other sources. It was recorded by Martin Carthy on Right Of Passage (1988), De Danann on The Mist Covered Mountain (1980), Old Blind Dogs on Wherever Yet May Be (2010), Ewan MacColl, accompanied by Peggy Seeger on guitar on Classic Scots Ballads (1956), The Young Tradition on Galleries (1968), A.L. Lloyd on The Valiant Sailor (1973) and Niamh Parsons on Blackbirds & Thrushes (1999).