Don't Give Up the Ship

A stiff, aromatic stirred cocktail with gin, sweet vermouth, Cointreau, and Fernet-Branca — a civilized classic revived from the 1940s.

Don't Give Up the Ship first appeared in Crosby Gaige's Cocktail Guide and Ladies' Companion, published in 1941, in a form closely related to the Napoleon Cocktail in Harry Craddock's Savoy Cocktail Book (1930). The drink's name references the famous last command of Captain James Lawrence, who commanded the United States frigate Chesapeake in its engagement against the British frigate HMS Shannon on June 1, 1813, during the War of 1812. Lawrence was mortally wounded early in the battle and was carried below decks, reportedly saying don't give up the ship as his final command. The Chesapeake was captured, but Lawrence's words became one of the most famous naval mottos in American history — Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry had the phrase sewn on his battle flag for the Battle of Lake Erie three months later. The cocktail was revived at the Zig Zag Café in Seattle around 2004, where bartenders including Murray Stenson — one of the most respected figures in the Pacific Northwest craft cocktail community — championed obscure pre-Prohibition recipes. The Zig Zag Café, situated in Pike Place Market, became one of the influential bars in the early American craft cocktail revival. The drink's Fernet-Branca component — the intensely herbal, minty Italian amaro produced in Milan since 1845 — gives it a pronounced bitter complexity.