The boy stood on the burning deck

a humorous reference to the poem Casablanca by Felicia Dorothea Hemans (1793-1835) about the death of the son of a French naval captain in 1798. The ship that they were on caught fire while the boy was on watch, and the father was burnt to death. The boy stood by his post until the ship blew up:

"The boy stood on the burning deck,
Whence all but he had fled.
The flame that licked the battle's wreck
Shown round him o'er the dead.
The flames rolled on;
he would not go
Without his father's word."

There have been many corruptions of this poem by anonymous authors.