I'd certainly agree with Johnm that Vestapol as we know it came into the fingerpicking arena from Elizabeth Cotten but there was a 19th century parlour guitar piece called either "Sebastopol" or "The Siege of Sebastopol", referring to events of the Crimean War in the 1850s around the Russian city of that name. According to Steve James' Roots and Blues Guitar (p.28) it was published as a four-page 'descriptive fantasie' by the guitarist Henry Worrall in 1887. Perhaps the most significant aspect of the tune was that it was in Open D tuning; it's fairly easy to see how the title could be altered in popular parlance to Vastapol. There was another parlour piece entitled "Spanish Fandango" which was in Open G...
Cheerily,
Gerry C
