"The Bold Princess Royal" is an English, Canadian and American ballad in G major or D major and 3/4 time. According to the Canadian singer who related the song to Helen Creighton for her Songs and Ballads from Nova Scotia, this song is based on the true story of a ship carrying passengers between Halifax and Newfoundland. The ballad was printed on numerous broadsides in England in the mid and late 1800s. Several of these can be found at the Bodleian Library. The ballad is listed in a manuscript list of a Bristol printer (Collard) dated 1837. Vaughan Williams collected it, and it appeared in his Folk Songs from the Eastern Counties (1908). This may be the tune Vaughan Williams had in mind when he incorporated a "Princess Royal" tune in the Sea Songs movement of his English Folk Song Suite along with "Admiral Benbow" and "Portsmouth". This is not the "Princess Royal" tune attributed to "O'Carolan" or the one used as an "English morris dance", both in G minor. The dates and ports vary. In different versions the ship leaves on the fourteen or fifteenth of February, fourth of August, eighth of October, fourteenth of April, fourteenth of November and eighteenth of June. The ship sailed from the bay, from land and from Liverpool and was bound for various places including Cairo, the Rio Grande and New Orleans. The song is sung to several tunes, this is an arrangement by Vaughan Williams. It was also recorded using the tune of "Sweet Betsy from Pike".