# Sea Songs and Shanties



## Guest (Feb 21, 2016)

I've always had a thing for the ocean--don't know why. I even joined the US Navy just to live as a sailor which I did for 6 years. It's a rough life--being a sailor. I can only imagine what it must have been like in the 18th and 19th centuries. Do you know what it's like to be so seasick, you wish you'd just die and get it over with? So sick that you are hallucinating? So sick, your head feels like it's been over-stuffed with a mixture of broken glass and jagged, heavy rocks? So sick, you're ready to jump into the ocean just to get off that godawful pitching ship that rocks side to side for weeks at a time without a single let up--won't give you even 5 seconds of a steady deck so you can orient yourself?

And when you're sick like that, you think anyone cares? You think you're going to go lay down in your rack and moan yourself to sleep? No. Get up and get to work--NOW! The reason is that if you mollycoddle a guy who is sick, he thinks he should be sick. So you lay into him and force him to get over it and get to work. And I was determined to overcome it. "Come on, boy," I told myself, "you wanted this life. Well, here it is in all its glory. Are you going to cave in or are you going to rise above it. All these other guys have done it." I learned to overcome the seasickness by overcoming it. That's it. You just don't let it kick your butt.

After four voyages, I rarely got sick and could even stand watches and work on equipment in very rough seas with the ship tossing about without feeling a thing. And when I found some new guy in a stupor with seasickness, I'd chew him a new one and make him get to work. Eventually, he'd get the hang of it. Sailors call that "getting your sea legs." You learn how the ocean moves and you just sort move with it. Trouble is, you'd get land-sick once you were back onshore. With your body adjusted to ocean movement, it still continued to move with the ocean while you were onshore making it feel like you're walking on a trampoline. Landsickness wasn't that bad, though, not like seasickness. Landsickness just feels weird; seasickness is fecking horrible.

To be a sailor is to learn how to live with minimal sleep. You just don't get much chance to sleep. You're always working on equipment late into the night or someone's waking you at 0330 hours to get ready to assume the 0400-0800 watch (which you actually assume at 0345 hours) or an emergency goes down and you have to man your GQ station. Always something stealing your sleep. Once I got off the midwatch in the #1 engine room and hit my rack for about an hour--I was dead out when I was awoken. The vent fans in the #2 engine room weren't working and it was my job to figure out why. So I dragged myself out of my rack, got dressed, went down to the #2 engine room and the top watch showed me what was wrong with the vent fans. The only problem was, they functioned perfectly--nothing wrong with them. He said, "Jesus, man, I'm sorry! I swear it wasn't working a second ago! I swear it wasn't working."

"That's alright," I said. "I was having a nightmare anyway." And went back to my rack. That's life as a sailor.

Another time, we were a couple of days from docking in a foreign port--Europe somewhere--and the in-port light wasn't working. I went over and checked the fuses but they were good. The only other thing to do at this point was to check the bulb itself and see if it was burned out. Trouble was, the bulb was almost at the top of the mast and we were in pretty choppy seas. But, the light has to be functional as we approach port so someone had to go up the mast to change it. They tried to get this one guy to go but he went up about 10 feet and he froze--wouldn't climb any higher. "I'll go up," I said. Me and another guy went up--you have to have two guys at all times in case there's an accident aloft. As I'm changing the bulb out, I can see the ship waaaaayyyy down there--guys ondeck watching me looked like ants. I just tried not to look and concentrate on what I had to do. I didn't want to drop the bulb--that would suck. As the ship tossed in the waves, I could see the weatherdeck below swing to the right across my field of vision and then there was nothing but ocean and this force pulling me to the left so hard I had to brace myself. Then the weatherdeck would swing across my vision this time to the left and then nothing but ocean under me and a force pulling me to the right and this kept repeating. It's a terrifying feeling because it feels like the ship is going to topple onto its side even though you know it can't. But it sure feels like it. But I get the bulb changed and the in-port light illuminates and so we came back down.

Then there's this:










Christmas lights on a guided missile destroyer. These weren't optional, if you were in your homeport during the Christmas season, you had to have these strung up. You to run steel cable up the mast at both bullnose and fantail and then pull the light-strings up the cable with rope in that bitter cold ocean wind at winter time. It was the electricians' job to do it and, of course, I was an electrician. When we went on a goodwill cruise to northern Europe, we had to string up these lights in every port, stay a few days, take the light down and get underway until we hit the next port and do it again. If you think it must have sucked to string those lights up and take them down over and over again--you're so right that you have no idea how right you are.

But there were good times too. I sailed with some good buds--and with complete a-holes too--but you only hit the foreign towns with guys you liked. You'd either go to the bars and then the whorehouse or to the whorehouse first and then the bars. A lot of places had the whorehouse and bar in the same place which made it easier. Went all over Europe, all over South America, the Caribbean, the Middle East and South Asia. The best port we ever docked in was in this fjord in Trondheim, Norway. Across the bay was this mountain with a white thread winding its way down that terminated at the bottom in a waterfall and at night we had the "nordlies" over us--the aurora borealis--which is breathtakingly beautiful. Pakistan was really strange. Old school Muslim nation with camels and long-eared cows everywhere. You feel like you stepped back in time. At dusk, you'd see bats pour out of buildings and fill the sky. But Kuwait and Bahrain were more modern. Kuwait was almost like America with its nightlife. Brazil, Venezuela and Columbia were a lot of fun. Got to tour the Reeperbahn in Hamburg which is completely wild--you'll see stuff there that you'll never see anywhere else. The Azores were the most beautiful spot I saw. Jamaica was...uhhhhh...crazy. Went through the Suez Canal and down the Red Sea which looks like it did 2000 years ago. Some good times.

And life aboard ship? Crowded. There is minimal space for the crew. Any large spaces are strictly for equipment. A person gets only enough to be functional. John F. Kennedy put it best:










Now in the modern Navy, we don't sing worksongs or shanties. Shanties were meant for strenuous work that took teams of hands working in unison to complete such as turning the capstan or hauling yards. Today the capstan is turned electrically and, of course, we don't haul yards anymore. They were structured as call & response. "Shanty" is just a corruption or variant of "chantey" or something to chant which is the French word for sing.





"Haul Boys Haul" is an old shanty. On the ships, they were sung without musical accompaniment. But as pub singalongs and what not they were adapted for instruments and even as instrumentals:






Most shanties still popular today come from England and and Ireland were adopted by the New England Yankees. One of the most popular was "Spanish Ladies" Melville mentions as being sung by the crew of the _Pequod_ in "Moby Dick":






Some American shanties were made up by American blacks such as "Mail Day" which has the structure of a spiritual. Another, I believe, is "Roll the Woodpile Down":






It is often referred to as being Irish but I find that questionable. Lines as "way down in Florida" and "that brown girl o' mine's on the Georgia line" and a reference to getting with those "yaller girls" would indicate this is an American shanty of black American origin. Also when they sing, "That brown girl o' mine's on the Georgia line" they break into barbershop quartet harmonies (and every version I've ever heard does it) and the barbershop quartet came from American blacks which originally came out of the fields. Now, I'm not a scholar and i could be wrong, but that's how it looks to me.










The Wabash Minstrels of the flagship the USS Wabash taken in 1863. Certainly they would have sounded very interesting.


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## Guest (Feb 21, 2016)

Sailing is one of humanity's oldest occupations, prostitution notwithstanding. In fact, I have learned from extensive firsthand observation and experience that the two occupations are very tightly bound to one another. Wherever there are ports and sailors, there are brothels and prostitutes to service them.









From an 1811 broadside, the term "Jack" was a British term for a sailor who were generally referred to as "Jack Tar" or "Jolly Jack Tar."

Coastal towns and seaports have a nautical culture since the sea is the front yard. This is equally true of the Michigan and Canadian towns bordering the Great Lakes (which are not lakes strictly speaking and which Melville terms "freshwater seas" which is far more apt). By nautical culture, I mean that oceanic and sailing themes are used on the businesses in the area even if they have nothing to do with either simply because neither is far from people's minds in such areas. In fact, more goods and supplies are delivered to Michigan by freighter than by train or truck combined. When the lakes remained frozen well into spring a few years back, there was worry that Michigan would start suffering shortages of everything from food to toilet paper-the vast majority of which are delivered to our state via the Great Lakes rather than highways or rails which supplement the ports more than compete with them. All along the coast, one sees businesses using all kinds of nautical motifs-ship steering wheels, oars, anchors, sails, boats or ships. These are also found in great abundance in residences-decorative anchors in people's yards, ships or whales as weather vanes, sailboat-shaped mailboxes with the flag shaped like a sail, doormats depicting a ship on the ocean, etc.










But in past centuries, the nautical themes weren't simply for quaintness but were deeply rooted in the lives of the people that lived within the culture. Their language was peppered with nautical references, children's songs were drawn from sailor shanties and worksongs, hymns sung in church were also formatted as shanties or specifically geared to nautical themes. Many of the colloquialisms used in English came from sailing:

• "I don't like the cut of his jib" refers to the jib sail on a ship.
• "I was three sheets to the wind" refers to a sail, often called a sheet, not properly tied down and goes slack in the wind and three such sails makes the ship completely useless as it meanders about on the ocean like a drunk.
• "No room to swing a cat" refers to the cat o' nine tails flogging instrument and is otherwise self-explanatory.
• "By and large" refers to sailing "large" when the wind is directly behind the ship which sailors refer to as a "bowline." Sailing "by" was when the wind was not quite behind the ship but slightly offset. It is impossible to sail by and large simultaneously.
• "The whole nine yards" refers to a yard on a mast which holds a sail. There were three yards on all three masts and so if one had a sail flying from each one together, one had the whole nine yards.
• "Mind your Ps and Qs" referred to pints and quarts. If a sailor off the ship in a tavern started getting three sheets to the wind, one of the mates or the master-at-arms might tell him to watch his intake of alcohol by telling him to mind his Ps and Qs…before the cat gets out of the bag.
• "Slush fund" refers to slush which was kept and eventually sold by the cook. In the modern American Navy, lending money with interest is still called "slushing" which is against regulations.
• "I was taken aback" refers to wind conditions in which the sails are blown back against the masts halting all progress.
• "Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey" refers to a device in which cannonballs were triangularly stacked on deck. It was called a monkey and was made of brass. If the weather got sufficiently cold, the monkey contracted enough to cause the topmost cannonballs to fall off the stack. Almost everybody believes this expression to have a vulgar meaning.

There are all kinds of nautical terms peppering our everyday speech: making headway, getting pooped, pipe down, water-logged, locker, rig, between the devil and deep blue sea, the bitter end, overhaul, dismantle, forge ahead, windfall, field-day, at loggerheads, slow on the uptake, scuttlebutt, toe the line-all nautical terms. For these terms to have made their way into our speech long ago shows how important sailing was and still is.


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## Guest (Feb 21, 2016)

I sometimes perform "Sally Brown" with guitar accompaniment at open mics but my version is a rather different from this. I use Paul Clayton's version as my model. That's the thing about shanties, they can vary quite a bit from performer-to-performer.





"Eliza Lee" may have been a railroad shanty adapted by sailors. Lines as "Clear away the track and let the bulgine run" and references to "a-jolting car" would strongly indicate that this was sung by railroad workers. Some have suggested that railroads often passed through shipyards and it might be a shanty for sailors that loaded the supplies from the ship to the rail cars. Sure--could be.





"A-rovin'" otherwise known as "The Maid of Amsterdam" is a well known from the 19th century but has roots going back to the 17th and probably earlier than that. I sing this one at open mics as well. It has many different verses and mine are thus:

In Amsterdam I met a maid
(Mark well what I do say)
In Amsterdam I met a maid
Who was always pinchin' the sailors' trade
(I'll go no more a-rovin' with you, fair maid
A-rovin', a-rovin' since rovin' been my ru-I-n
I'll go more a-rovin' with you, fair maid)

I took that maid out for a walk
I took that maid out for a walk
I fed her run and did she talk

She said, "You sailors I love you so!"
She said, "You sailors I love you so!"
The reason why I soon would know.

I put me arm around her waist
I put me arm around her waist
She said, "Young man, you're in great haste!"

I put me hand upon her knee
I put me hand upon her knee
She said, "Young man, you're rather free!"

I put me hand upon her thigh
I put me hand upon her thigh
She said, "Young man, that's rather high!"

(This next verse is my own)
I slipped me hand beneath her dress
I slipped me hand beneath her dress
It felt real nice, I must confess

I gave that miss a little kiss
I gave that miss a little kiss
And back onboard my money I missed

I borrowed a little from every version I've heard. I like these particular words because they were definitely written by a sailor. I had just such an experience in Orlando, Florida along the red light district called the "Orange Blossom Trail." Me and a mate picked up a prostitute, went to this secluded area, took turns boffing her, paid her, dropped her off and went to eat and realized that somehow she had emptied both our wallets. I definitely had money left after I paid her but somehow she got the rest of it before we dropped her off-both of us. I have no idea how. Damn hooker magic.

I don't mean to offend anyone when I write about this stuff but that's sailor life. Before I joined the Navy, I never picked up prostitutes. I did not have the nerve. As a sailor, after you've spent 6 months on the sea, you gotta go get some and cops, pimps and muggers be damned. And after I left the Navy, how many prostitutes have I picked up? Zero. It's just being in the Navy. It's what you do. Being married meant nothing. Sailors are cheaters. Any woman who marries a sailor is an idiot.


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## Guest (Feb 21, 2016)

The word "Yankee" probably came from sailors. In England, sailors were called by generic terms as Jack or Johnny. Many shanties have Johnny in the title-"Whisky Johnny," "Leave Her, Johnny, Leave Her," "Heave Away, My Johnny" and some believe that when the English descendants in the American colonies began to move into the New Netherlands (New York) region, that the Dutch referred to the English as Janneke (Little John or Johnny) because they were most familiar with the English sailors back in Europe-the Johnnies. Eventually, Janneke (pronounced "Yah-ne-keh") became pronounced by the English-speakers themselves as Yankee. This term was originally strictly applied to Americans of English descent as it was in Connecticut as well as to the Quakers of Nantucket who considered themselves both American and English. The New England whale fishery which was run by Quakers was even usually called the Yankee whale fishery (the Quakers, of course, started in England). The original dialect of the white Massachusetts settlers was also called the Yankee dialect, which is not spoken anymore.





Johnny Collins - Leave Her Johnny (sea chantey) - YouTube

One thing that seems to be overlooked is that the punk sub-genre called Oi is partly descended from pub sing-alongs which are greatly influenced by shanties. I noticed the similarity when I was still in the Navy and listening almost exclusively to punk at that time. Years later, when I met some shanty singers I was surprised to hear some of them say that some shanties have a punk-like feel. Indeed they do and for good reason. I'm so used to hearing that from shanty-lovers that it no longer surprises me.





Old Billy Riley - Johnny Collins - YouTube
This one has always struck me as punkish.





The Exploited - Sex and Violence - YouTube
This one by the Exploited certainly sounds like it was derived by the pub sing-along.





Rolling Down the Bay to Juliana - YouTube
Give it a rock band set-up and it's pretty much textbook perfect Oi.





Booze & Glory - "London Skinhead Crew" - Official Video (HD) - YouTube


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## Guest (Feb 21, 2016)

This, by rights, should be considered proto-Oi. Just give it a standard Oi rock band set-up and it's not far from being Oi. Yet it is also quite clearly a pub sing-along.





English Pub Singalong - YouTube
So Herman's Hermits were engaged in some proto-Oi also.





Cockney Rejects - Oi Oi Oi ! - YouTube

Should we be surprised at the similarities? Who were the sailors on the British ships? Well educated lads or noble background? No, they were rough, tough guys off the worst streets in England and Scotland. Brawlers and drinkers who weren't above thievery and rape, which is why corporal punishments were so harsh. They had to be to have any effect on guys like that--many of whom were pressed into service and so not exactly willing participants in a ship's sea-faring adventures. And what kind of music would they base their shanties and songs on? The stuff they heard on the streets and pubs obviously. The guys that joined oi bands were basically the same kind of guys left a pub so drunk they could barely walk and found themselves onboard a navy ship when they came to in the morning.






The word Oi was coined by Gary Bushell. It just basically means "Hey!" as a way of hailing someone. Note its close similarity to "Ahoy!" which is also a means of one ship hailing another. Yelling "Oi!" across the water at another ship would be too short to hear so it is simply stretched out into "Ahoy!" as the addition of the "A" and the "H" allows the person yelling to release the "oi" syllable with greater volume and power. A few years back I picked up an anthology called "Carry On Oi!" put out by Gary Bushell. Strangely, it was put out by Ahoy Productions and the logo was the face of an old-fashioned ship captain. Coincidence or was Bushell giving us a subtle clue as to the true origins of Oi?


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## Guest (Feb 21, 2016)

Pub singalong, shanty or oi? What's the difference? This tune has some pretty old roots. It has been traced back to the 13th century and sung by soldiers and sailors alike not to mention the common people in the pubs.


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## Guest (Feb 21, 2016)

"Queen of the Sea" by Gerald M. Burn, a 1926 lithograph I bought for five dollars!









"In All Her Glory" by Gordon Grant, another 1926 lithograph I bought for five dollars.

Might be junk to them but it's treasure to me.









"Flying Cloud" a beautiful clipper ship. As pretty as she is, I wouldn't have given a worn penny to be among her crew. Only a sailor knows what it's like to be a sailor.





"Flying Cloud" a gorgeous song from the Doobie Bros. written by Tiran Porter. Goes very well with the above painting.





A Nantucket sleighride is when a whaleboat crew harpoons a whale and gets dragged for miles across the ocean until they are far from sight of the ship. Often, they never returned-no trace of them ever turning up. Felix Pappalardi wrote this and was a resident of Nantucket Island (where I stayed in 1996). He dedicated the song to Owen Coffin. Owen was a 15 yo lad who served aboard the whaleship _Essex_. It was rammed by an enraged sperm whale and sank in 1820 in the South Pacific. The crew was huddled together in the tiny whaleboats adrift for weeks with little food or water.

At one point, the survivors starving, they drew straws. The loser would become lunch for the others. Owen drew the short straw. The CO, Captain Pollard (I once served under a Captain Pollard), was Owen's uncle and offered to take the boy's place but Owen said no. He drew the short straw fair and square and he was willing to die to save his mates. He was shot in the head, dismembered and eaten. A short time later, all were rescued and it appeared that Owen died needlessly although no one could have known that at the time.

Back in Nantucket, a hearing was held and Captain Pollard was exonerated. Cannibalism was deemed legal in extreme instances. However, Pollard was never given command of another vessel. He was brother-in-law to Owen's mother but she never spoke to nor even looked at Pollard for the rest of her life as though he were invisible. Clearly, she thought he should have been the one to die and treated him as though he had.

Pollard became a lamp-keeper in the city of Nantucket. He still held this job when Melville met him and interviewed him as research for _Moby Dick_ (which was based on the ordeal of the _Essex_). He found Pollard and amiable but sad man who seemed grateful that someone even wanted to hear his side of the story.









Vessels getting rammed by whales (usually by accident) often had to be scrapped if they managed to make it back to shore. Even steam-powered ships suffered damage. In one case, a steamship plowed into a whale and was stopped dead in its tracks until the whale freed itself and swam off apparently unhurt while the vessel "limped" back to shore, as it were. In the case of the _Essex_, the whale that rammed them apparently did so quite deliberately. The first hit crippled the ship. The crew watched in astonishment and terror as the enormous creature circled back around and came straight at them for a second collision. Frantically, the crew tried to change course and watched in disbelief as the whale compensated by altering its course so as to hit them full on with its head appearing to know that this would do the most damage. Men threw themselves into the sea as the whale bore down on them with what appeared unmistakably to be to them pure hatred and utter fury. The second hit was so deadly that the water rushed in and the vessel pitched on its side and sank in only a few minutes. A whale can be as big as a modern nuclear submarine but only expends a tenth of the energy at any given time and is infinitely more maneuverable. An adult whale ramming a nuke sub is a frightening scenario.









Whaleship.


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## Guest (Feb 21, 2016)

This CD, "Blow ye Winds in the Morning," is excellent. Highly recommended to anyone with an interest in sea songs and chanteys.

The ancient "Padstow May Song" although observed superficially as a Christian festival has deep roots in Celtic paganism. Folklorists and researchers believe this festival-called 'Obby 'Oss is probably linked to Beltane.

The festival is held in Padstow, Cornwall, England on May Eve (April 30 otherwise known as Walpurgisnacht). It involves two men dressed as "horses" or 'osses ('obby 'oss = hobby horse). One 'oss is called "Old" and the other is called "Blue Ribbon." On May Eve, the people gather outside the Golden Lion Inn and sing the Night Song. During the night, people dress in greenery and a maypole is erected.

By morning, men called "teasers" prod the two 'osses through the streets. As the 'osses cavort through the streets, they try to grab any young maidens they spy. A band is led through the streets by a man called the "Mayer" in a top hat and stick while people sing the Morning Song (or Day Song). At evening, the two 'osses meet at the maypole and then are afterwards led to their respective stables. The crowd then sings the 'obby 'oss death song. The festival ends until the 'Obby 'Osses are resurrected next spring. For clearly, we can see this is a spring/fertility festival.

What has this to do with sailing? Nothing except that the Morning or Day Song contains a couple of notable verses:

The young men of Padstow they might if they would,
For summer is acome unto day,
They might have built a ship and gilded her with gold,
In the merry morning of May.

And:

O! where is St. George,
O!, where is he O,
He is out in his long boat on the salt sea O.

St. George, we remember, slew the dragon:










But Melville stated in _Moby Dick_ his belief that George was a harpooner and the dragon was a whale. I don't know if Melville was aware of the Padstow May Song but it states that St. George is "out in his long boat on the salt sea…"

This is the seal of the borough of Padstow:


















The Padstow sea cadets. On their covers is the word "Petroc" which refers to St. Petroc, a Welsh missionary who founded the town around 500 CE as "Petroc-stow" or "Patrick-stowe" (Petroc's place).


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## cwarchc (Apr 28, 2012)

Great posts Victor, very interesting.
As you said, the coastal towns took on a maritime slant
Here are a couple of songs




The women used to follow the herring fleets as they tracked the fish


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## cwarchc (Apr 28, 2012)




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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

The Ewan Macoll song "Shoals of Herring" comes from a Radio Ballad - Singing the Fishing written by Macoll and others and based on the singing of Sam Larner of Winterton (Near Great Yarmouth) and others. Sam was born in 1878 and went to sea in 1886, signing on as a cabin boy in 1890. He learned many songs from his father and other fishermen and first performed in public at the age of nine, singing for pennies to coach parties passing through the village. Later, he sang at fishermen's smoking concerts in ports along the coast from Shetland to Cornwall, as the fishing fleet followed the annual migration of the herring. Shortly after his death in 1965, the BBC produced a set of programs based on his reminiscences.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

The Byrds' Roger McGuinn was (and presumably still is) a fan of British and Irish folk music, including shanties. He sang a really good version of Go to Sea Once More (retitled _Jack Tarr The Sailor_) on the group's _Ballad of Easy Rider_ album from 1969.


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## Guest (Feb 21, 2016)

"Cape Cod Girls" shanty. Cape Cod is an interesting place to visit. I would recommend doing so in the early autumn just after school starts. Otherwise it's too crowded with vacationing families. When I went there, a lady I know told that she and her husband tried to drive all the way out to Provincetown but could not get there because there were so many cars and the road was jammed. When I went at the end of September, I practically had the road to myself. After reaching, Provincetown, I realized it was a lesbian stronghold. A buddy told me it was like an East Coast offset to San Francisco as a gay male capital on the West Coast.





The Seamen's Hymn - YouTube
An example of the church hymns of coastal areas dependent on the sea for their livelihood.









The dory men of Nantucket.





We be Three Poor Mariners - YouTube
"We Be Three Poor Mariners" was first gathered by Thomas Ravenscroft in 1609 in a work called Deuteromelia as a second collection of King Henry VIII's Mirth or Freeman's songs. It quickly became a virtual anthem of sailors complete with a statement that sailors are superior to mere soldiers. I bowed this on double bass at a recital once along with two young gentlemen playing violin and cello to rousing applause. Of course the piece at was my suggestion. I was pleasantly surprised that they consented to do it.

We be three poor mariners, newly come from the seas;
We spend our lives in jeopardy, while others live at ease.

Come let us dance the round, a round, a round
Come let us dance the round, a round, a round
And he that is a bully boy
Come pledge me on this ground, a ground, a ground.

We care not for these martial men, that do our states disdain;
But we care for those merchant men, who do our states maintain.

To them we dance the round, a round, a round
To them we dance the round, a round, a round
And he that is a bully boy
Come pledge me on this ground, a ground, a ground.

















Scrimshander made from a sperm whale's tooth. Sperm whales had no baleen but rather large teeth in the bottom jaw which is odd because many sperm whales they caught had no teeth at all and yet seemed to get along just fine. Sailors often engraved art on the teeth and bones of a whale. This was known as scrimshander. I have some but it is artificial. Real scrimshander is hard to come by and largely illegal.





Stan Rogers - Barrett's Privateers - YouTube
Stan Rogers' "Barrett's Privateers." Rogers was a Canadian folksinger from Halifax who not only sang a lot of sea songs but wrote a great many-this one being of his own compositions. It has become very famous among both the folkies and the shanty-singers (the latter being a subset of the former). It is not unusual to hear it sung in bars around the world. Rogers died in 1983 when an Air Canada DC-9 caught fire while he was still in the cabin. The cause of death is attributed to smoke inhalation. His brother, Garnett, who was part of Stan's band and a very talented fellow, now carries on Stan's legacy.









New Bedford, MA in winter. I spent part of 1996 in New Bedford which is a charming seaport and once the whaling capital of the world. From my own time in Norfolk, I can tell you that the relentless winter wind blowing in off the ocean is unspeakably COLD.


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## Guest (Feb 22, 2016)

Randy Dandy-Oh is one of my favorites. I love Johnny Collins' version. I think he was the best of the shanty men. No one did them like him. Shame he's gone. Another of my favorite shanty men is A. L. Lloyd. Unlike a lot of shanty men, Lloyd actually was a sailor.





The Bonny Ship The Diamond - A L Lloyd - YouTube

Lloyd with Ewan MacColl were great together:





Ewan MacColl & A.L. Lloyd - Row Bullies Row (sea chantey) - YouTube
This one mentions Liverpool which was and is a big sea-farin' port. Strangely, this one even sounds like the Beatles. You could actually imagine the Beatles doing this one in their Rubber Soul/Revolver period. Let us not forget that Freddie Lennon, John's dad, served aboard various ships. You figure sea songs and shanties had to be known by them just because they were in Liverpool.










Also Lloyd's version of "The Greenland Whale Fishery" is only version I truly like but no one has loaded it. I think it was the truest way it was originally performed--it's the oldest preserved whalermen's song.

Lloyd & MacColl also did the best version of "Whisky Johnny"--as a true shanty, the way it was meant to be heard. That's not loaded either. Here is their version of "The Handsome Cabin Boy":





Ewan MacColl & A.L. Lloyd - The Handsome Cabin Boy (sea song) - YouTube

It was based on a true story--about a girl who disguises herself as a lad and signs onto a whaleship. In the real story, she did so because her true love was serving on one and she was trying to find him. According to the first mate, she was an exceptional whaleman. When the whale was breaching the water sending huge waves that threatened to tip over the whaleboats, most greenhorns screamed, cried, some even tried to jump overboard. Others would refuse to go out again. Some deserted because whales scared them to death. But this girl showed no fear at all, seemed not the slightest bit perturbed at the whale's deadliest flurries. Everyone thought this young lad extraordinarily brave--until he was discovered to be a she. After that, she had to be removed from the ship at the nearest port. When she left the ship, she was decked out in a fine dress and bonnet, looking very feminine. Upon watching her disembark, the first mate remarked with his voice choking, "There goes the bravest greenhorn I ever served with."


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## Guest (Feb 22, 2016)

Another great shanty singer is Louis Killen. Here he does "Wild Goose Shanty" which is quite a favorite among the shanty singers:





Louis Killen - The Wild Goose (sea shanty) - YouTube





Haul Away Joe - YouTube
"Haul Away Joe" is an old favorite of shanty enthusiasts and this is a very nice version--sung as a true shanty. Great clip too.





Stan Rogers - Rolling Down To Old Maui - YouTube
"Rolling Down to Old Maui" is an old whaling song. This version done by Stan Rogers is the general version. A. L. Lloyd does it quite differently.









American sailor of the 19th century. This uniform is called black (or blue) crackerjacks or just crackers for short. The thing hanging around his neck is a neckerchief which has to be rolled and then tied in a specific knot. The black turtleneck isn't worn anymore. I seem to remember wearing something like that in boot camp but I certainly never wore it after that. The black beret is not worn anymore; the modern sailor wears a "white hat" or "dixie-cup". I like the beret better. It's something like a glengarry only without the torrie (pom-pom) and the ribbons in the back although the ribbons would have been a nice touch. The flap in the back was originally a handkerchief or scarf that the sailor tied around his neck and let hang like a reverse bib. The reason is that sailors wore their hair long and tied it back in a ponytail and put tar over it to protect it from the elements. The reverse bib then kept the tar off the sailor's shirt. Eventually navy uniforms were designed to have this back flap. And, yes, that is the reason sailors are called "tarry" and Jack Tar.









Whalemen dressed a bit differently. These guys were of the Greenland fishery. Note the dog.









The fouled anchor is an old maritime symbol. Fouled in this sense means tangled. A fouled anchor is useless as it cannot be lowered. A ship with a fouled anchor cannot dock or hold fast and so is in distress. It is worn as a collar device by the chief petty officer grades (E-7 thru E-9) and symbolizes his status as the go-to guy when the ship is in trouble. For example, a boiler may break down and be taken offline. It has to be restored to service as quickly as possible (boilers produce the steam that turns the ship's main engines which turn the screws-the propellers-which makes the ship go) so the chief engineer will learn on the senior BTC (boiler tech chief) to oversee getting that boiler back up and running. IOW, it is his job to unfoul the anchor, as it were, and get the ship out of distress.

The Marine Corps uses the fouled anchor in its emblem because whenever the country becomes entangled in a war, it is the marine's job to disentangle it. The fouled anchor is also embossed on the buttons of the sailor's peacoat (worn by E-6 and below):










The fouled anchor is also a religious symbol that may have all kinds of screwball meanings attached to it by various sects but its basic meaning is that the anchor (termed the "golden anchor") is our spirit which is entangled in flesh and temptation. Our job is to disentangle our spirit and free it so that it may assume its rightful place in the universe.









My fouled anchor tat (no, it does not wash off). I troubleshoot for a living.


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## Metairie Road (Apr 30, 2014)

A (fairly) modern shanty from Tom Lewis

*Tom Lewis - A Sailor ain't a Sailor*





Not a shanty but a great sea song from the fabulous Watersons

*Watersons - The Greenland Whale Fishery*





Best wishes
Metairie Road


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## Guest (Feb 24, 2016)

Another thing that originated among sailors is the concept of alcohol (ethanol) proof. In the U.S., proof is twice the percentage of alcohol by volume (ABV), e.g. 100 proof is 50% ABV, 190 proof is 95% ABV, etc. But this was not the original method of determining proof. During the 16th century, the British sailors considered rum to be currency. They would accept it as payment. However, they had to make sure it wasn't watered down so they would pour out a small measure of gunpowder, pour some of the rum over it and attempt to ignite it. If the gunpowder burned, the rum was considered to "one hundred degrees proven" and was therefore acceptable. So 100 degrees proof meant that rum had to be nothing less than 57.15% ABV, any less and the gunpowder wouldn't ignite.

As a ratio, 57.15 is 4/7 or 0.57143 so to know the ethanol content of a liquor by volume, multiply the percentage of ABV by 7/4, e.g. 57.15 x 7/4 = 100.0125 which rounds off to 100 proof (or, more properly, 100 degrees of proof). So 95% ABV is 95 x 7/4 = 166.25 or 166 degrees of proof. To calculate the percentage of ABV from the degrees of proof, simply multiply the latter by 4/7, e.g. 88 degrees of proof is 88 x 4/7 = 50.28% ABV.

Liquor always accompanied every voyage but it was kept strictly under lock and key by the cap'n. Once or twice a day, he would break out some rum or whisky and dispense a small amount to each crewmember. They often drank "grog." Although grog could mean anything from a weak beer to any number of liquors treated with sugar or nutmeg or cinnamon, etc., the traditional grog was rum with limejuice or lemon. The reason was the citric acid retarded any spoilage of the water but also prevented scurvy which was caused by an acute lack of vitamin C in the body. Rum and lime was introduced to the British Navy in 1740 by Vice Admiral Edward Vernon. His men took a bit of the concoction everyday and were noticeably healthier than sailors who did not. Afterwards, the British Navy put lime in their potable water and passed out limes to the crew and the British sailors consumed prodigious amounts of lime which is why Brits are called "limeys," that too was due to sailors.










Admiral Vernon was known as "Old Grogram" for the grogram coat he wore. Sometime in either 1749 or 1770, the beverage he introduced to the sailors was called grog in his honor. When it was grog time, the sailors assembled on deck with cans. Some old shanties and sea songs have references such raising "a can of grog." The grog wasn't canned but cans replaced cups on ships. Cups and plates had to be unbreakable onboard a ship because, in rough weather, everything would get tossed around fiercely. In Navy parlance, everything had to be "secured for sea" or "stowed away" but in really rough weather, it wouldn't matter much-everything ends up everywhere and there's quite a clean up once the ship enters smooth waters. So glasses and porcelain wouldn't last in a voyage. They would be broken and useless after the first storm. So sailors used cans as drinking vessels.






And feck the Brits anyway because their sailors can drink onboard. American sailors cannot drink onboard or bring on alcohol. Hell, the British Navy supplies it to them!! Whenever crossed paths with a British Navy vessel, those bitch-asses would line up on the weatherdeck with their mugs of booze and toast us real loud. Not to be friendly but to rub it in because they know we can't drink onboard. Dicks.










When I served, there was a concerted effort to reduce the amount of drinking by sailors because so many got in trouble all the time. Sailors are a-holes in case you didn't know-drunken troublemaking a-holes. Sailors are so bad in that towns that have bases are often rather anti-sailor-especially the cops. I put on a good drunk every now and again but I was generally known to be level-headed. Officers trusted me to keep guys out of trouble. Once, a few of us were in a bar and some shyteheads who weren't sailors started causing a ruckus. A waitress got grabbed and she was really hacked off about it. These guys just kept getting louder and rowdier. They started cat-calling us because they knew we were sailors by our distinctive haircuts. Some of my guys wanted to beat the shyte of them but I persuaded them to stay seated saying that the cops were coming. When the cops arrived, the bartender and waitress pointed towards the area where the morons were sitting, which happened to be right next to my party. The cops come over and start arresting US!! Again, they knew we were sailors on sight and just assumed we were the ones (because sailors so often are). Other people started saying, "Not them, not them-those guys right there!!"

Part of the problem is the Navy itself. At the base nightclubs, for example, they served 3-2 beer. Why, I can't imagine. All that does it convince sailors to drink more of it. Well, let me tell you something about 3-2 beer-it can kick your butt just as surely as regular beer. You'd see squids puking everywhere. I had a pukefest myself once because I drank too much of that crap without realizing it wasn't particularly weaker than regular beer until I found myself huddled over a shytter talking to Ralph. Every squid knew that serving 3-2 beer on base just increased the drunkenness but they never changed the policy all the time I was there (Great Lakes).





Fifteen Men (Bottle of Rum) - Original Version - YouTube

Then I went to Germany. Germans and alcohol!! Those fecking people! We docked in Kiel and went out on liberty and a bunch of us went to this tavern and they served Lowenbrau. Well, this was REAL GERMAN Lowenbrau-not that bottled dishwater they sell to us here in the States. This crap was like syrup!! Man, I choked down one stein full of that stuff-bitterest shyte I ever tasted-and I was f-ed up! Guys were drunk on one stein.

A couple of nights later, I'm out with some buds and this German master chief invites us to his table-very nice guy-we start drinking Holstein which is brewed in town and then this guy orders us each a yard of beer. It's called that because the damn mug is a yard high! And they want you to just down it! So we did and then he orders us peppermint schnapps! I never really had it before. In Germany, it's not even pasteurized! It's not fit for human consumption and I drank a shyteload of it and then lost it all on my way back to the ship. Horrible hangover the next morning-hellish, torturous. That peppermint soaks into your gut and you taste it all day-this nauseous, pukey, peppermint taste and smell rising into your throat and sinuses from your gut. It was DISGUSTING!!! I actually prayed to god for the first and only time in my life. I said, "God, I'm desperate!! Stop the peppermint and I swear I'll never drink that shyte again!! If you have any mercy in you at all stop the fecking peppermint!!!" Well, either there is no god or the he has no mercy. And Germans walk around with beer everywhere they go on Keilerwoche! They shop holding beers! You can't put a sailor in that kind of environment!






In Cobh, Ireland, they served real Murphy's Stout which I had never had before. It's brewed somewhere close to there so it's fresh. Man, was it good!!! Oh, I LOVED it!! I drank nothing but Murphy's the whole time I was in Ireland. Ireland gave me a real taste for black ale. Now it's usually all I drink. I can still drink lagers but I will take Murphy's, Guinness, Beamish, Old Engine Oil or you name it over lager. London Porter too! And I got smashed once on this stuff called Boddington's Pub Ale or some such thing. It was so good I just kept drinking it even when I knew I had better stop. I liked it but it sure leaves an after-taste in the morning if you drink too much.










Then in Jamaica-Montego Bay-we're in some club and these Jamaican girls were at the next table. Nice looking so we invite them over to sit with us. We talked for a while and then conversation turns to rum-which Jamaica is famous for. So this one girl says she's been drinking rum since she was 4 and could drink us all under table. Hey, I didn't doubt her. But this one guy-ol' Powell-starts up with this "no chick drinks me under the table" crap. So we order a bottle of rum-don't remember what kind-and the girl fills her glass to the rim and without hesitation just downs it. Just like that-gone. So Powell grabs a glass and fills it almost to the top-not quite as high as hers was-and he downs it. No sooner did he swallow it then his eyes roll back in his head, his head flops forward, his mouth opens and all this vomit comes gushing out. As if that wasn't bad enough, another guy with us-JB we called him-looks at the vomit and then HE vomits too!! So we left that table-needless to say. We drag Powell outside and he turned into a vomit fountain-he's just gushing away. It was brutal.






The worst I ever saw though was at my flat. I had a flat off the ship and it was party central for the guys on my ship. There were always people stopping by. So a bunch of us are drinking and it's getting really crazy. And this guy-ol' Pruitt-got so plastered I was afraid he'd die of alcohol poisoning. He vomited all over himself for like 3 hours. So we had to strip his clothes off and carry him to the shower while he's still puking. We just left him in there with the water on. Finally I go in there after a couple of hours and two guys scrubbed him down and were massaging him saying, "Come on, Pruitt, get it out, baby, get it out!" while he was STILL VOMITING!! I got his clothes washed and we dressed him a little and laid him on the floor in the living room. Now everybody's gone-it's 3 am-and it's just me and Pruitt who is totally passed out. I'm just watching him because he's dry-heaving while he's passed out just continuously!!! I'm debating if I should call an ambulance but I finally decide not to. He seemed to be passed the worst of it so I went to bed. He was gone in the morning. I never saw anybody get that drunk and live.














You'll never recognize this drinking song.


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## Guest (Feb 24, 2016)

This is my favorite version of "The Greenland Whale Fishery." This is oldest known whaling song which dates from at least 1725. A. L. Lloyd was a whalerman for a time and he has the perfect voice for such sea songs. Plus, he speaks like a real whalerman. When he sings, "Overhaul, overhaul, let your davitt tackles fall" he pronounces "davitt tackle" with the long A sound like a true whalerman. Most people pronounce "davitt" like "have it" but it's really "dave-it." And most people pronounce "tackle" to rhyme with "cackle" but it's actually "take-ul."


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## Metairie Road (Apr 30, 2014)

So what do sailors get up to when they're not at sea?

Lot's of great versions of this lovely song. This is one of my favorites.
*Eliza Carthy - Just As The Tide Was Flowing* 





Another great song about a sailor, had to post it.
*Looking Glass - Brandy (You're A Fine Girl)*





Best wishes
Metairie Road


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## Guest (Feb 26, 2016)

An old Indian legend in New England stated that the god Moshup was trying to sleep one night but his moccasins were filled with sand and so he took them off and threw them into the middle of Cape Cod forming the islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard with their beautiful, sandy beaches. Another legend says that Moshup knocked ashes from his pipe and formed the islands that way. Geologists believe they formed during the last Ice Age.

Nantucket itself was discovered first probably by the Wampanoag tribe although no one knows when. The Vikings may have sailed close enough to see it in the 11th century. By 1602, an English ship out of Falmouth called the Concord captained by Bartholomew Gosnold mentioned sighting the island but not land there. Gosnold landed on Martha's Vineyard instead. Two years later, another Englishman named George Waymouth charted Nantucket's position but did not land there. For the next four decades. Nantucket remained unexplored by whites. In 1641, Thomas Mayhew purchased Nantucket for ₤40 from two English noblemen who held conflicting deeds and decided to sell the land and split the money. Mayhew also got the Elizabeth Islands thrown into the deal. He wanted to distribute the land under a manorial system as in England. The many Indians should be brought about via conversion to Christianity.










Nantucket Island. I lived here through part of 1996. A lot of rich vacationers now go there "to summer." There are some very beautiful, very expensive-looking houses there. Cold as the pit of Dante's hell in the winter though.

In 1659, a Yankee planter from Boston named Tristram Coffin bought Nantucket from Mayhew. Coffin and eight other buyers want to get out of Puritan-controlled Massachusetts and decided to live on the island. The nine buyers were Tristram Coffin, Thomas Macy, Christopher Hussey, Richard Swayne, Thomas Barnard, Peter Coffin, Stephen Greenleafe, John Swayne and William Pike. The cost was ₤30 and two beaver hats. Macy, a Baptist, fled the mainland in 1659 for harboring two Quakers from the Puritans who then hung them. Macy arrived on the island in an open boat along with his wife, five children, a 12-year-old boy named Isaac Coleman and a friend named Edward Starbuck.

To get craftsmen, farmers, businessmen and the like to come to Nantucket, each of the owners were granted a share of their own and another to bring in an outsider who could help the island develop an economy. Each proprietor took his extra share and halved it and gave each half to a junior partner. In all, there were 27 original shareholders. One of the half-shares was given to a man amed Peter Folger who was originally from Norfolk, England and had worked for Thomas Mayhew as a surveyor. He had done missionary work for Mayhew working to convert and educate the Nantucket Indians and became fluent in their language making him further valuable as an interpreter. He was married to Mary Morrill who was a former-indentured servant and may also have been from England. He had once been jailed as a court clerk for siding with workers and farmers in disputes against wealthy landowners and he urged that whites treat Indians fairly and with dignity. The Folgers moved permanently to Nantucket in 1663 after Peter was granted his half-share and worked there as a surveyor, interpreter, clerk, miller and schoolteacher. He and Mary had a daughter named Abiah in 1667. Abiah married an English immigrant named Josiah Franklin, a Puritan, in 1689. Abiah took up Puritanism, which the mostly Baptist Nantucketers had come to the island to escape, and moved to Boston with her husband. Their eighth child was born on Milk Street in 1706 and was named Benjamin. Little needs to be said about Benjamin Franklin except that his Puritan upbringing filled him with a disdain for kings and bishops and colored much of his outlook on life as an English colonist. His father's admiration for the Indians likewise influenced him to adopt the Iroquois Confederacy's constitution as the model for the nation.










Although considered the foremost Founding Father in the struggle for American independence, one of Franklin's son, William (illegitimate), was the last colonial governor of New Jersey and a staunch loyalist and was already imprisoned for his loyalist leanings when the Declaration of Independence was signed. The differences between both men were irreconcilable.

Another of Peter Folger's descendants was James Athearn Folger. He was born on the island in 1835 but left it at the age of 14 along with his brothers. They wanted to go to California and prospect for gold. They sailed on a ship to the Isthmus of Panama then rafted and hiked their way across the isthmus (there was no canal yet). Then they managed to catch another ship going to San Francisco and arrived there in 1850. He decided not to follow his brothers to the gold fields and stayed in the city. Ten years later, he founded the J. A. Folger Coffee Company known today simply as Folgers Coffee.









1898 Folger's ad. Folger's is now part of Smucker's. Macy's department stores originated from the Macy family also of Nantucket.

The island's main product at this time were woolen goods which were in great demand due to the hellacious New England winters. Nantucket became known for its weaving and spinning. In 1699, however, the Wool Act went into effect which banned the sale of wool between the colonies and a new island industry was needed. Whaling was already being considered as Obed Macy makes clear when he wrote: "In the year 1690 some persons were on a high hill observing the whales spouting and sporting with each other, when one observed; there-pointing to the sea-is a green pasture where our children's grand-children will go for bread."

Long Island had done some whaling starting the 1640s bagging the so-called right whale (or Greenland whale). These were generally beached whales that washed up on the shore and the Long Islanders took turns stripping off their flesh and bone and collecting their blubber and oil. Nantucketers did the same starting about 1672 when men would man high spars to look as far out to sea as possible for whale. If he spotted one, he alerted the men below who dispatched a boat to chase it down, harpoon it and drag it back to the beach.

When the whales stopped swimming so close to the land, the Nantucketers built small sloops with a whaleboat that could be lowered into the water to chase down a whale. They might be out for week just to catch one whale. When they did, they flensed it in the water-peeling off the blubber in a long continuous piece like an orange rind-and collected the blubber in casks which were stowed below. They had enough room for one whale and would then sail home. The casks were unloaded and taken to a tryworks to be "tried out." Trying out blubber involved slicing it very thin and then heating on the tryworks until it melted into oil. The oil was then poured into casks and stored.









A whale blubber trying station in Wood's Hole, Massachusetts.

The Nantucketers went after right whales until 1712 when Captain Christopher Hussey's ship was blown off-course and he came upon a pod of sperm whales (or spermaceti or parmaceti). These whales were not known to Nantucketers before then but Hussey and his men bagged one and towed it back to the island. Upon stripping off the blubber, the Nantucketers discovered the sperm whale was loaded with fine oil-far better and more plentiful than that of the right whale. In the whale's "forehead" area or case, was harvested an oil so fine it hardened on contact with air and had to be heated before it could be collected in casks. This case oil could lubricate the most delicate and intricate machinery and clockworks like nothing previously discovered. From that time on, Nantucketers would hunt only spermaceti.









Head and case of a sperm whale.

Spermaceti in the Atlantic were rare as it was and then deserted it completely for the Pacific and the Nantucketers were forced to follow them by sailing around Cape Horn at the tip of South America. A long, hazardous journey. The ships now had to be floating processing stations, the option of hauling the whale shore no longer available. It had to be done at sea as quickly as possible.


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## Guest (Feb 26, 2016)

The ships were large and had to have a tryworks built into it. Harpooning still had to be done from smaller whaleboats deployed from the ship. When the harpoon struck, it was attached to a very long coil of rope in a metal tub that passed around a loggerhead-a cylinder post that was mounted in the keel so it would not snap off. As the whale ran with the harpoon iron in him, the rope paid out very quickly and needed to offer resistance to the whale to tire him out. So the rope passed around the loggerhead a couple of turns. Yet the whale ran so fast that a man had to stand over the loggerhead and dump water on it to keep the ropes from catching fire. The rope was going so fast that it was extremely dangerous to touch it. If it had a kink in it, it could tear off a man's arm, leg or head-frequent occurrences-or a man would try to step over the rope and get yanked overboard in a split second and there would be nothing that could be done for him other than praying for a quick death. Usually only a greenhorn tried to step over the rope and to promptly get smacked and chewed out by someone more experienced. Only an experienced whaleman could coil the rope in the tub. It had to be done right or people could lose life or limb. Even with the line paying out at smoking speed, the whaleboat was pulled along at a good clip and this little jaunt was called a Nantucket sleighride.









Old salt coiling the rope in a tub.

The rope was attached to the harpoon iron which had to be hurled into the whale's blubber. Each harpooner was also a steersman having both an iron and an oar rudder. If the whale worked its way around the boat, the steersman in back now picked up his iron and became the harpooner while the harpooner up front now picked up his oar and became the steersman. That way the boat wasted no time having to get turned around.

Often the boat capsized and men drowned but sometimes they'd get back in but would lose the whale. After the whale exhausted itself, it would float listlessly on the water but this was the most dangerous part of the venture. The boats had to paddle up carefully and the pikeneer would drive a long pike through the whale's heart. Trying to drag a live whale back to the ship to be flensed was suicide. It had to be dead and this was the only way to ensure that it was. Then came the thrashing as the whale went into its death flurry. This animal that could be 70 tons or more of power and fury would thrash maniacally in the water making an enormous ruckus that often capsized boats. This was made even more dangerous because the whale's blood and thrashings would attract sharks. One slap of the tail could fill a boat with water instantly or smash one to pieces killing all hands. Many whalemen lost their lives during the random death flurry of the whale which they said was even worse than its most deliberate assaults.










Now the whale was towed back to the ship, lashed to the side and a man was lowered on a rope with a cutting tool and he began to cut the blubber from the corpse. The bloodletting was tremendous and sharks would come by the dozens to feast so they had to work fast. The slower they went, the more of the whale went to the sharks. If the man on the rope wasn't careful, he'd loose a leg or a foot to a shark or be bitten in half. A winch with a hook pulled the blubber off in a continuous piece as the man on the rope sliced it free and it was lowered onto the deck where hands sectioned it into pieces and carried them to the tryworks-a big brick oven with huge pots that held the blubber. A fire was roaring in the brickwork and the blubber would melt and the oil collected. The entire deck would be covered in blood as would the hands. Melville described it as a scene from hell. This was also usually done at night because the smoke from the tryworks attracted pirates if done during the day. The oil was put in casks which were then stowed in the hold. Only when the hold was filled, which took 3 to 4 years, did the ship go back to homeport.









Oil casks unloaded on the pier.

The hazards were great and hours were long. One spent weeks and weeks just floating waiting for a whale to happen by. Many men went crazy from the monotony. Mutinies were not uncommon especially if the captain or mates were sadistic or enjoyed doling out harsh punishments for minor offenses. Desertion was a huge problem for the whale fleet. Once the crew caught sight of the beautiful tropical islands with the flowers and fruit and the gorgeous island women, they often jumped ship. This was so common that once a whaleman got homesick, he could enlist on the next whaler going his way with no questions asked and this wasn't just for Nantucket but was international. Melville himself jumped ship, not once, but several times. He was kept by some natives on an island and had to escape. He signed up on an Australian whaler but the first mate was such a prick that he and several other men led a mutiny for which they were put off the ship. Melville joined the Navy in Honolulu in order to get back to New England.


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## Guest (Feb 26, 2016)

The first song I ever learned on fiddle. I took up fiddle to learn this one. I'm self-taught so I'm not that great.









This 1902 print goes well with the above music.









Whale breaching. You can see why the greenhorns peed in their trousers the first time they went out a-whalin'.














Capstan shanty for lowering or weighing anchor.









New Bedford whalermen.









Whalermen's wives from a photo housed at the New Bedford Whaling Museum which I visited in 1996.


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## Guest (Feb 26, 2016)

Images of Old Nantucket









The old Baptist Church of Nantucket.









Nantucket street. The platform on the roof at the right is called a "widow's walk" referring to the wife of a ship master who lived as a widow because her husband was gone so much. The widow's walk was placed high up so the ladies could sight their men's ship returning from a good vantage point.









Ship masters (captains) and owners made quite a lot of money and built beautiful houses on Nantucket. Ordinary seamen made almost nothing.









Virtually all the men of Nantucket had whaled at some point in their lives.









The women of Nantucket lived as widows even as their husbands were alive. They carried on the island business in their prolonged absences (a single whaling season took about 4 years). The matriarch of Nantucket was Mary Coffin Starbuck who brought Quakerism to the island. Many of the Nantucket women fought loneliness by burying themselves in work or by having affairs with other men in port or sometimes with each other. Many fought off loneliness with a type of plaster dildo called a "he-at-home." Ahab lamented to Starbuck how he had wed and only spent his wedding night in bed with his wife and was gone to sea ever afterward until she died of loneliness. "I widowed that poor girl the day I married her," he said.


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## Guest (Feb 26, 2016)

Sperm whale lashed to the side of the ship.









Whale being flensed.









Whale blubber bring tryed out in the ship's tryworks. These are Japanese sailors working aboard an Yankee vessel. The Yanks hired anyone who was willing to ship out with them because desertion was such a problem.









The whale's tail was the most feared part of its whole body. One good slap could instantly fill a whaleboat with water, sinking it. Those whalemen who got under the tail as it was coming down never lived to talk about it. The boat would be smashed to pieces. The sailors called the whale's tail "the Hand of God."









Whalermen. Poor sots. I know just how they feel. I had that same look on my face once.


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## Guest (Feb 26, 2016)

Here in Michigan, we know we are by far the most nautical state in the Union. But how can that be, you ask? What about California or Florida? They border the ocean! Virginia has the Norfolk base, San Diego has a naval base and so does Bremerton, Washington! San Francisco, Boston, Charleston are all major seaports. Michigan doesn't even touch an ocean! But consider the following:

According to the National Marine Manufacturers website, the number of registered boats in the US is as follows:

1. Michigan 1,000,337
2. Florida 922,597
3. California 896,090
4. Minnesota 834,974
5. Texas 624,390 
6. Wisconsin 619,124
7. New York 529,732
8. Ohio 413,276
9. Illinois 398,431
10. South Carolina 383,971
11. Pennsylvania 357,729
12. North Carolina 353,625
13. Louisiana 327,272
14. Missouri 325,717
15. Georgia 325,135
16. Washington 266,717
17. Alabama 264,191
18. Tennessee 259,235
19. Virginia 243,590
20. Iowa 229,705

Michigan has the longest freshwater coastline in the world and second longest coastline of any state except Alaska.

Michigan has more lighthouses than any other state.

The Great Lakes contain 21% of all the freshwater on the surface of the earth.

Remember too that Michigan has an upper and lower peninsula and both these have to be factored into the equation, so to speak. Strangely, the two peninsulas do not touch each other. Each borders a different state. They are literally bridged together by a single stretch of steel and concrete called the Mackinac Bridge (pronounced "Mack-in-naw").









The Mackinac Bridge as it looked in January of 2012. This bridge is huge but sways in the winds and once a lady's Yugo was swept off the bridge into Lake Superior. For months no one could find her to the point that people questioned whether people imagined witnessing the event but , there was a report of a missing woman who was in the area at the time so they kep t looking and looking. Finally, the car and body were eventually found resting on a ledge some 300 feet down. Were it not for witnesses having seen the car fly off the bridge, no one would even have known what happened to her.

The enormity of the Great Lakes can't be underestimated. Although called lakes, they are not really landlocked. They are hooked together chain-like and eventually drain out into the St. Lawrence Seaway and, from there, into the Atlantic. The original water that filled the lakes some 14,000 years ago was glacial meltwater. Today the levels are maintained mainly by melting snow and less so by rain (both direct and run-off). In 2013, the lakes were considered to be at emergency low levels but after the horrendous winter of 2014 (where prolonged temps in Detroit were lower than in the Arctic and which was the snowiest winter ever recorded in the Detroit area), raised the levels by at least a foot and some say by about 16 inches.

The Great Lakes are not lakes but are called "inland oceans" and Melville called them freshwater seas. These are far more apt descriptions although the term "Great Lakes" will almost certainly never fall out of favor. There are a million businesses in Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, New York and Canada that use "Great Lakes" in the title. But these lakes ARE oceans and have all the same characteristics including tides, swells, currents, waves and weather. You could film a movie or TV series about sea battles on the Great Lakes and no one would know the difference (and I know this because it's been done many, many times). I've sailed the oceans and the lakes and can tell you there is no appreciable difference.

-All the water in the Great Lakes would cover the U.S. to a uniform depth of 9.5 feet.

-Lake Michigan is the largest lake contained within the borders of a single country.

-Freighters that sail the Great Lakes are specially designed for that purpose and are called "lakers."

-Storms on the Great Lakes are much rougher than storms on the ocean but are fortunately more restricted. The reason why laker ships are designed different than ocean ships is because the winds on the lakes can be severe and blow a ship upon the rocks which will peel the hull open like a tin can. It is believed this may have happened to the Edmund Fitzgerald. She was a laker but it didn't much matter. When the Witch of November wants you, she takes you.






November is the worst month to be on the lakes. That's when the gales hit and they hit hard. The gales are called the Witch of November because the winds howl and shriek like nothing you've ever heard--like a banshee or a grief-stricken woman. While tides on the Great Lakes are far less dramatic than on the ocean, the lakes have an event peculiar to them--the Seiche.

A Seiche (pronounced "saysh") is called a Great Lakes tidal wave although it has nothing to do with tides but the effects are the same. A seiche will occur when the winds blow strongly away from the shore for a prolonged period but then a line of severe weather rips across the area and blows the water back towards shore resulting in waves as high as 40 feet rushing in! The water level will change suddenly and dramatically. Once, the level shot up 65 inches! Fortunately, the state has strict building codes that don't allow people to build houses too close to the shores for this reason but, even so, a 65-inch seiche came very close to wiping out towns and neighborhoods and probably killing hundreds but fortunately withdrew after about 90 minutes when the storms were finally past them. But the water was all the way into some people's yards.









A derecho crossing the Great Lakes towards Michigan in 2Aug2015 which did major damage.









The derecho approaches Muskegon from across Lake Michigan.









How would you like to be sailing under that?









All you can do is watch it blot out the sky and wait for the howling winds and the sideways rain.


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## Guest (Feb 26, 2016)

But as big as Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario are, they pale in comparison to Superior. Here are some facts about the undisputed queen of the Great Lakes:

1. Lake Superior is, by surface area, the world's largest freshwater lake.
2. The surface area of Lake Superior (31,700 square miles or 82,170 square kilometers) is greater than the combined areas of Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire. 
3. Lake Superior contains as much water as all the other Great Lakes combined, even throwing in two extra Lake Eries. Its volume is second only to Russia's Lake Baikal--the deepest lake in the world.
4. Lake Superior contains 10% of all the earth's fresh surface water.
5. There is enough water in Lake Superior (3,000,000,000,000,000--or 3 quadrillion-- gallons) to flood all of North and South America to a depth of one foot.
6. The known deepest point in Lake Superior (about 40 miles north of Munising, Michigan) is 1,300 feet (400 meters) below the surface.
7. Over 300 streams and rivers empty into Lake Superior.
8, The average elevation of Lake Superior is about 602 feet above sea level.
9. The Lake Superior watershed region ranges in size from 160 miles inland near Wabakimi Provincial Park to only 5 miles inland from Pictured Rocks National Seashore.
10. The Lake Superior shoreline, if straightened out, could connect Duluth and the Bahama Islands.
11. The average underwater visibility of Lake Superior is 27 feet, making it easily the cleanest and clearest of the Great Lakes. Underwater visibility in places reaches 100 feet. Lake Superior has been described as "the most oligotrophic lake in the world." Oligotrophic means it has low productivity and so produces very little algae.
12. The lake is about 350 miles (563 km) in length and 160 miles (257 km) in width.
13. In the summer, the sun sets more than 35 minutes later on the western shore of Lake Superior than at its southeastern edge.
14. Lake Superior has over 400 islands, the largest of which is Isle Royale, with a size of 207 square miles.
15. Waves of over 40 feet in height have been recorded on Lake Superior.
16. Travel by car around Lake Superior covers a distance of about 1,300 miles.
17. The largest underwater formation in Lake Superior is the Superior Shoal, which rises from a depth of over 1,000 feet to within 20 feet of the water surface over a distance of just three miles.
18. Sudden changes in winds or barometric pressure around Lake Superior can produce seiches, a phenomena which results in water levels rising or falling as much as six feet along a coast in a short period of time.
19. Water in Lake Superior is retained, on average, 191 years.
20. Lake Superior produces the greatest lake effect snows on earth. (Significant lake effect snows are a rare phenomenon, occurring--besides on the Great Lakes--only on the east shore of Hudson Bay and the west coasts of two Japanese islands.) Lake effect snows extend 20 to 30 miles inland, primarily on the Ontario shore southeast of Marathon, and from Sault Ste. Marie to the Wisconsin-Michigan border. Average annual snowfall in Michigan's Keweenaw exceeds 200 inches in places. Lake effect snow from Lake Erie almost buried Buffalo in 1977 until the lake froze over but was so covered with powdery snow whipped by 50 mph winds that 30ft high snowdrifts buried houses and major roads requiring relief supplies to be delivered by helicopter to people trapped in their houses. And Erie is a mud puddle compared to Superior.
21. Within its borders, Lake Superior has both the thickest, and nearly the thinnest, crust found anywhere in North America. 
Some of the world's oldest rocks, about 2.7 billion years of age, can be found on the Ontario shore of Lake Superior. 
22. The average annual water temperature of Lake Superior is 40º F and is below that more than half the year making it much colder than the other Great Lakes. The glacial meltwater that fills the lake is so deep that it has not yet reached equilibrium with the post-glacial climate. Yet, Superior only very rarely freezes over completely, and then usually just for hours. The last complete freezing of Lake Superior occurred in 1979, although the lake was almost completely frozen over in 2014.
23. Migrating birds of prey funnel down Lake Superior's north shore in great numbers each fall. On a single day at Duluth's Hawk Ridge as many as 100,000 birds of prey might pass by. s because there are at least 88 species of fish in the lake and 70 million diporeia (shrimplike creatures) with a total biomass greater than that of the human population in the entire Lake Superior basin. So one can see the vital role the lakes play in the ecosystem. Not bad for a lake of such low productivity!
24. Lake Superior rests mostly on Precambrian rock at the southern edge of the Canadian shield, the largest exposure of such bedrock on the planet.
25. Sliver Islet, a Lake Superior island off Ontario's north shore, was the site for 15 years in the 1800s of the world's richest silver mine.
26. The area around Lake Superior and upper Michigan is very rich in copper and in ancient times, an unknown tribe mined about 1.5 billion pounds of it. The copper pits they dug are still found all over upper Michigan. This so-called "Lake Superior copper" is found in ancient implements all over the world.
27. Despite the huge amount of precious freshwater, virtually none is pumped out to farmer's fields or nor to ease drought-stricken areas. Politicians Michigan and other states the border the lakes as well as Canadian politicians are very, very stingy about letting anyone remove water from the lakes.
28. The lakes are where they need to be to do the most good. Further north, they'd be frozen over and useless to the environment. Too far south and the heat would cause too much evaporation greatly reducing the water levels. 
29. Most supplies delivered in Michigan are the result of freighter and not truck or train. If the water evaporated or froze over all year round, most of the food and products we buy in Michigan would be in severe shortage. That includes just about everything.





Can you tell this is not the ocean?










The oceans have nothing on the Great Lakes--nothing.


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## Guest (Feb 26, 2016)

Great Lakes shanty.









Great Lakes crew, 1900.





I have this book which comes with a CD full of recordings of actual Great Lakes sailors singing the shanties and lake songs they learned over the years. Glad someone had the sense to load it.


















November 1913, the so-called "Great Lakes Hurricane" killed over 250 men and destroyed dozens of vessels. it was caused by two separate but powerful storm systems slamming into one another over Lake Huron after the westernmost system had already devastated Lake Michigan!









The remains of a Life Saving station on Lake Huron after the storm has subsided.









Captain George Garlock who ran a freighting schooner out of Sodus Point, NY in the 19th century.


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## Metairie Road (Apr 30, 2014)

Can't let this thread sail off into the sunset just yet.

I'm not a sailor. My only sea-going experience was as a passenger on the Dover to Ostend ferry - big deal.

A great sing-along

*Louis Killen, Stan Hugill and chorus - Mingulay Boat Song* 





*The Pipes & Drums Of The 1st Battallion Black Watch - The Mingulay Boat Song*





Best wishes
Metairie Road


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## Guest (Mar 12, 2016)

Sailing also spurred the development of mathematics, astronomy and timekeeping. To sail anywhere on the globe and return in a predictable fashion requires celestial navigation. Celestial navigation is dependent on five instruments: a sextant, a chronometer, an almanac, a sight reduction table and a position chart. These were necessary in order to determine two things--latitude and longitude. Where these two lines intersect on the globe is where your ship is. That's a lot harder than it might sound. To determine longitude, ships used a chronometer (actually three). These were extremely accurate clocks. Prior to 1761, European clocks were pendulum-driven. This was no use to sailors due to the rolling and pitching of ship. So, before 1761, sailors determined longitude quite accurately using lunar distances. The navigator measures the angle between the sun and moon or between the moon and certain stars (called navigational stars of which there are 57) along the ecliptic plane (the sun's apparent path through the sky). The measurements must be precise. Having obtained the angle, the navigator consults an almanac that gives the angles of these various celestial bodies relative to the center of the earth and then correlates that to Greenwich time. Knowing what the time is in Greenwich, enables the navigator to know how far away from Greenwich the ship is which is plotted on a chart as the longitude. This method works quite well except there is one obvious and highly dangerous problem for a ship far out at sea: what if the weather is overcast for days at a time? To go four days without being able to plot a position is far too risky to chance.

Sailing also spurred the development of mathematics, astronomy and timekeeping. To sail anywhere on the globe and return in a predictable fashion requires celestial navigation. Celestial navigation is dependent on five instruments: a sextant, a chronometer, an almanac, a sight reduction table and a position chart. These were necessary in order to determine two things--latitude and longitude. Where these two lines intersect on the globe is where your ship is. That's a lot harder than it might sound. To determine longitude, ships used a chronometer (actually three). These were extremely accurate clocks. Prior to 1761, European clocks were pendulum-driven. This was no use to sailors due to the rolling and pitching of ship. So, before 1761, sailors determined longitude quite accurately using lunar distances. The navigator measures the angle between the sun and moon or between the moon and certain stars (called navigational stars of which there are 57) along the ecliptic plane (the sun's apparent path through the sky). The measurements must be precise. Having obtained the angle, the navigator consults an almanac that gives the angles of these various celestial bodies relative to the center of the earth and then correlates that to Greenwich time. Knowing what the time is in Greenwich, enables the navigator to know how far away from Greenwich the ship is which is plotted on a chart as the longitude. This method works quite well except there is one obvious and highly dangerous problem for a ship far out at sea: what if the weather is overcast for days at a time? To go four days without being able to plot a position is far too risky to chance.

So an accurate, non-pendulum-driven clock had to be developed so that the Greenwich time could be determined without being dependent on celestial measurements (or "sights" as they were called). John Harrison spent 31 years building such a clock and finally succeeded in 1761. It was essentially a highly accurate watch mounted on gimbals in a box to hold it steady. Most ships used three chronometers so that they could be checked against one another. If one chronometer started to drift, the other two would inform on it. These chronometers had to be wound at regular intervals and this duty was all-important and took precedent over any other duty. The captain and navigator (virtually always the first mate) usually had the keys to wind the chronometers. Failure to wind them was considered criminal placing the entire crew at jeopardy. The chronometers were mounted firmly to the ship itself so that they could not be tossed about by sea turbulence and they were highly resistant to angle, pressure and temperature changes. The navigator carried a very accurate pocket watch on his person that was calibrated to the chronometers and he would use this watch to mark the time when he went topside to take his sights. That way, the chronometers were never exposed to the elements outside the ship. Sailing gave us precision machinery tried and tested under the harshest of circumstances.










To measure latitude, the navigator used a sextant, so named because of it is 1/6th of a full circle, i.e. a 60-degree frame. The sextant has two mirrors on it. When the navigator looks the telescope viewer, he is looking through a mirrored but transparent surface called a horizon mirror. He looks that the horizon in the telescope and can see it through the horizon mirror. Then he uses the movable arm of the sextant to locate the sun or moon (or some designated planet or star). There is an index mirror mounted on the arm at the top of the sextant. When the desired celestial body is caught in the mirror, its reflection is bounced to the horizon mirror. The navigator can now see the body and the horizon simultaneously and lines them up inside the telescope so that the body appears just above the horizon in the horizon mirror. This accomplished, he reads the angle off the frame and notes the time. The advantage of two mirrors is that relative motion of the instrument is eliminated so that the view in the telescope is steady. The navigator obtains his angles and consults his almanac to find out the latitude or he can simply read Polaris from the horizon. However many degrees Polaris is above the horizon is also the latitude because it is situated almost directly over the North Celestial Pole. The problem, of course is that this method does not work below the equator since Polaris will not be visible.










Another way to use the sextant to determine latitude is to track a celestial body as it rises. If it tracks to the south as it rises then one is above the equator. If it tracks to the north then one is below the equator. If the body rises straight up then one is on the equator. The amount of this northerly or southerly tracking increases the farther one is away from the equator. So, again, consulting an almanac will then reveal the latitude.

This information was plotted on a position chart to pinpoint the ship's location. Using wind speed, wind direction and compass, one could predict the time of arrival at their destination and the sails were then set accordingly. This too was a specialized task. Sailing a ship far out at sea was no easy task. People had to know what they were doing or they had no chance to ever come home.










That's one reason that punishments of sailors was so harsh. The hands had to do exactly as they were told or everyone onboard was put at risk. This was a true of officers as the regular men. Anyone who failed to perform his duties in a timely fashion was punished in a timely fashion. Punishments ranged from flogging to yard-arming to gagging to keelhauling. The last was the worst because the victim rarely if ever survived it. The victim was tied around the hands and feet and dragged across the bottom of the ship against the barnacles across the keel to the other side and back again from fore to aft. This was reserved generally for captured pirates.














Standard punishment during the whaling era was flogging but was most used in the American and British Navies.Flogging was done by the master-at-arms and a special station was reserved where it took place. All hands not on watch were required to attend in order to send a message. Depending on the captain and other officers, punishments could be rare and only for significant offenses or could be frequent and applied with very little provocation. Most ships were somewhere in the middle. Punishments were most frequent and most severe in the Navy which was said to be the only place in the US where white men were whipped more often than black. Melville's novel "White Jacket" detailed the use of corporal punishment in the American Navy and a copy was put on the desks of every member of Congress and played a large role in eliminating corporal punishment from the Navy and the armed forces in general.

But sometimes there could even be worse things than punishment. Melville recalled one first mate on a ship he served on who had the hardest, meanest, coldest, most piercing eyes he had ever seen. Whenever he looked at you, your blood ran cold. If he came upon you standing around not doing anything, instead of threatening you with punishment, he would just fix those eyes on you which was so intolerable that you would immediately grab any tool near you-mop, marlinspike, hammer, harpoon, rope, paintbrush-didn't matter-and just start doing something with it-anything-"anything to get those damned eyes off you."

In another case, an 18th century British Navy captain known for his meanness came upon deck and saw men up in the rigging repairing sails, painting and what not. He yelled for all of them to come down this instant-last one down gets 50 lashes. None of the hands doubted him and they began clambering down as fast as they could go. Two men lost their grip, fell to the deck and died on impact. The captain chuckled and said with a sadistic grin, "Throw the lubbers overboard!" and then simply walked away.





One of my all time favorite songs. Sounds to me like it was derived from the second movement of Bach's "Violin Concerto in A Minor"









Most people are unaware that the cover of Procol Harum's "A Salty Dog" album is a parody of this British tobacco company trademark.


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## Guest (Mar 19, 2016)

Cutty Sark is a British clipper ship. Built on the Clyde in 1869 for the Jock Willis Shipping Line, she was one of the last tea clippers to be built and one of the fastest, coming at the end of a long period of design development which halted as sailing ships gave way to steam propulsion. Cutty Sark was preserved as a museum ship, and has since become a popular tourist attraction, and part of the National Historic Fleet. She is located near the centre of Greenwich, in south-east London.









Cutty Sark in full sail.









Cutty Sark figurehead depicts witch Nanny Dee holding a horse's tail. In Robert Burns's poem, she danced lasciviously in a short (cutty) chemise (sark). Essentially, Cutty Sark means, in modern parlance, "Mini-Skirt." Strangely, cutty sark is also a corruption of the Greek phrase "kata sark" or "according to (the) flesh."









Naval battle during the American Civil War, 1860s.





Cap'n Beefheart's tribute to sea songs and shanties which changed his life when he borrowed Zappa's copy of "Row, Bullies, Row" by Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd. Zappa said he never got the album back.


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## Guest (Mar 19, 2016)

The east coast of Canada was famous for these fishing schooners. Rather a thing of the past now. Stan Rogers explains:


























I would have loved to sit around a fireplace one night with Stan and a chest full of dark ale and let him play one song after another.


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## Guest (Mar 19, 2016)

The Charles W. Morgan at its dock in Mystic, Connecticut. It was originally harbored in New Bedford, Massachusetts. It is the only Yankee whaling ship still intact.









The try works or try pots.This where we get the term "tryed out." After liquefying, the fat is poured into a barrel called a cask and stored in the hold. When the hold was full, it was time to go home. This process, however, could anywhere from 3 to 5 years. Trying out was usually only done at night to prevent attracting pirates who would gladly take all that whale oil off your hands. That was liquid gold.









The spermaceti was transported from the ship to a processing station where it was poured into great kettle pots and heated to remove water and impurities. Then the oil was stored in casks until winter set in. In the deepest part of winter, the oil coagulated and was removed from the casks and placed in woolen bags which were then squeezed in a large press and the very fine "winterstrained" oil that issued out was collected. Here we see the arm of the press.









The oil squeezed from the press was bottled and sold. The world clamored for this oil and paid out huge sums to get it--it oiled machines and kept lamps burning brightly and cleanly.









The press and woolen bags full of spermaceti. Inside the bags, after initial winter pressing, was a compressed black residue called "black cakes" which was stored until spring arrived. As the cakes thawed, they oozed more oil. The cakes were pressed again and the resultant "spring-strained" sperm was collected.


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## Guest (Mar 19, 2016)

What was left in the woolen bags after the second pressing was a brown sludgy substance which was heated over a fire of wood shavings and potash until it clarified butter-like and hardened into a white wax. This wax made the Nantucket candles, spermaceti wax.









Natural spermaceti wax. In its natural state, it was a kind of creamy, whitish liquid and hence was called sperm.


















Remains of a captured whale.


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## Guest (Mar 19, 2016)

Another important part of the maritime life is the foghorn. The purpose of the foghorn is simply to warn vessels at sea during times of heavy fog not to approach too closely or risk running upon the rocks which would tear the bottom out of the vessel and sink it.

The foghorn was invented by a Scottish-born Canadian named Robert Foulis of New Brunswick around 1853. The device was steam-powered. The first foghorn was installed on Partridge Island in 1859. It was built by T. T. Vernon and called the Vernon-Smith foghorn. He used the blueprints of Foulis who hauled Vernon into court. Foulis proved that Vernon had used his blueprints without permission. The court sided with Foulis and declared him the inventor of the foghorn but Foulis never obtained a patent for his invention and so never made a penny in profit. Captain James Newton also claimed to be the inventor of the foghorn but his claim is easily refuted.









The Partridge Island steam-powered foghorn from an 1865 watercolor sketch by J. C. Myles.









The Kobba Klintar foghorn in 1942.









The Nash Point foghorns are extremely loud. Foghorns make use of low frequency because they have much longer wavelengths than high frequencies and so travel much farther and hence warn vessels at sea far earlier. This twin-horn design is called a diaphone foghorn.





Mayne Island diaphonous foghorns at Georgina Point.









Alki Point lighthouse and foghorns.









The Daboll Trumpet was a foghorn invented by Caledon Leeds Daboll. Daboll Trumpets were used exclusively in the United States from the 19th century until the 1920s. The Daboll Trumpet ran on a single horsepower coal-fired engine.





A Daboll trumpet foghorn.


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## Guest (Mar 19, 2016)

The fog comes on little cat feet.
It sits looking over harbor and city 
on silent haunches and then moves on. --Carl Sandburg

Concerning Sandburg's 1919 poem "Fog", it expresses a great deal in only 21 words. Clearly, he was influenced by haiku when he wrote it. The fog may be a metaphor for confusion or despair or isolation which can come upon us cat-like at any moment and hover over us a while like a cat surveying its territory. But sooner or later, it leaves.

Some foghorn samples, some rather eerie:

http://www.sanpedro.com/sounds/foghorn.wav

http://www.sanpedro.com/sounds/foghorn6.wav

http://www.sanpedro.com/sounds/foghorn7.wav

http://www.sanpedro.com/sounds/foghorn8.wav

http://www.sounddogs.com/previews/58...NDDOGS__fo.mp3

http://www.sounddogs.com/sound-effec...NDDOGS__fo.mp3

http://www.sounddogs.com/sound-effec...NDDOGS__fo.mp3









The loud blast we hear during hockey games whenever a goal is scored is a foghorn.









Foghorns are vanishing now as electronic technology makes tricky navigation effortless. There simply isn't a need to spend the money on something that no longer serves its purpose. But the hole its absence leaves in the psyche is never filled.





This is a Daboll trumpet used in this sample by the Steve Miller Band in 1968.


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## Metairie Road (Apr 30, 2014)

*The Young Tradition - The Bold Fisherman*





Same title, different song

*Alan Mills - The Bold Fisherman* 





Here's Humphrey Bogart's version.

*Humphrey Bogart - The Bold Fisherman*





Best wishes
Metairie Road


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Don't know if anybody mentioned this yet, but you have to get into the Wagner opera, Der Fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman, a sea captain condemned to sail the seas to eternity). It's all about the sea. Here is an excellent production of it:


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

I've done a quick scroll down this amazing thread (will reread more closely later) - I don't think I'm repeating anything. If I am, sorry.

But I just couldn't resist posting this gorgeous version of 'General Taylor gained the day', one of my favourite shanties (we have it sung by Young Tradition):






(Victor, are you going to post some more brilliant stuff? Hope so! :tiphat


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## The Deacon (Jan 14, 2018)

Prog connection:

Moving sea shanty sung by children finishes the 1975 concept lp, "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by David Bedford.(Mike Oldfield guitar)


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## Guest (Feb 10, 2018)

Ingélou said:


> I've done a quick scroll down this amazing thread (will reread more closely later) - I don't think I'm repeating anything. If I am, sorry.
> 
> But I just couldn't resist posting this gorgeous version of 'General Taylor gained the day', one of my favourite shanties (we have it sung by Young Tradition):
> 
> ...


This shanty mentions something I think I forgot to cover--shame on me. The singers mention "shellbacks." What are shellbacks? A shellback is a sailor who has "crossed the line." The line in question is the Equator. A sailor who has not crossed the line is a "pollywog." Maybe two weeks before the ship is scheduled to cross the line, the crew is divided into pollywogs and shellbacks. Shellbacks are the bosses and order the pollywogs around and constantly shout the question, "WHAT ARE YOU??" And the pollywog answers, "I'm a pollywog!" One shellback is chosen to be the Royal Baby. He's generally biggest, chubbiest guy they have. We had a big ol fatty boiler tech chief. If a pollywog could touch the Royal Baby prior to crossing the line, he was automatically a shellback and wouldn't have to go through the upcoming ceremony. So the Royal Baby is guarded by the biggest, most muscular guys and their only mission is to surround the Royal Baby and let no pollywog near him. Everywhere the Royal Baby went, his entourage went and if you tried to get close, you'd get knocked on your butt.

On the day that the ship is to cross the line, the ceremony begins. The pollywogs are called to muster on the fantail. They are wearing their worst dungaree work clothes because they will be unwearable after the ceremony is over so you don't want to waste a good set. First the shellbacks blast you with a firehose on solid stream and if you think that doesn't hurt like hell you're insane. Everybody is trying to hide behind everybody else to avoid the hosing but you just end up getting stepped and fallen on. This lasts like 15 hellish minutes or so then you're marched off to the next station and a new group of pollywogs takes your place getting soaked. I can't remember everything, but we had to crawl on our knees and elbows through garbage strewn across the weatherdeck--stinking, rotting garbage that they saved up for 2 weeks for this occasion. If someone vomits in it, you just crawl through it. The weatherdeck is topped with non-skid--a very rough surface--and so your knees and elbows get sore and raw very quickly. The shellbacks stand there with rubber hoses and if they see you put any part of your body on the deck other than knee or elbow, they whack your butt with their length of hose and they do it hard while screaming, "WHAT ARE YOU??" "I'm a pollywog!" "WHAT??" "I'm a pollywog!!"

I remember we were pilloried and fed garbage ladled out of a garbage can. Guys would get sick and vomit in it and they would mix it in and then ladle the mess to you--you had to swallow a ladle full. You could vomit but you had to at least swallow it. "WHAT ARE YOU??" "I'm a pollywog!"

Then I remember being forced to kneel before the Royal Baby. He yelled, "WHAT ARE YOU??" "I'm a pollywog!" "Time to go fishing, pollywog!" He smears a huge glob of lard over his fat, hairy belly. Then he picks up the cherry and shoves it all the way up his navel which is nestled deeply between two disgusting, lard-covered rolls of hairy belly fat. Then he points to his bellybutton and says. "Go fish, pollywog!" I had to suck the cherry out. I had to come out with it in my teeth. By then, my face and hair were covered in sweaty lard.

Then I was whisked off to a ducking station where a shellback says, "Aww, let me wash all that garbage and lard off your ugly f--kin' face!" Then he grabs my head and ducks it in a tub of water--the same water 150 other guys have already been ducked into before you and he holds you down until you start gurgling. The he pulls you out and yells, "What are you??" "I'm a pollywog!" Then he dunks you again and holds you down. then he pulls you out and yells, "What are you???' "I'm a pollywog!" Then he ducks you down again and holds you down then lets you back up and yells, "What are you???" and now, you get wise and realize the ceremony is over and you say, "I'm a shellback!" "Congratulations," he says, "You're a shellback!" Then he shakes your hand and tosses you out and starts on the next poor idiot after you.

You get a certificate proclaiming you a shellback and it is entered into your service record. The next time you cross the line, you get to dish it out. You get a wallet-card too. It looks just like your certificate but it fits in your wallet so you can show other squids some night when you're sitting getting drunk that you are a real shellback.

The other ceremony is the Bluenose. This is for when you cross the Arctic Circle. We had to wear only our underwear and a tie. I made fun of some officers that were going through it as I was waiting my turn to start. A chief who was a bluenose says. "Okay, smartas-, get in there!" Then he yells, "Mr. Funny-guy comin', treat him right!" In fact, that chief was the Royal Baby in my shellback, same guy. So I went up to the foc'sle and had to sit on a super cold bollard. A bollard is a big metal thing they wrap the mooring line around when they are not in use. That sucker was COLD. Then a chief calls me over and starts questioning me, "What's your name?" I wasn't having any of it. "Dr, George Fishback, MD," I said. "Still wanna be a funny guy, eh? Go back and sit on that bollard!" So back I went. After 20 minutes or so, he calls me back and demands my name. "Flakey Foont!" I said. "You're flaky alright! Go back and sit down." After another 20 minutes, he called me back. This time when I stood up, I left part of my butt on that cold metal. Still I gave a phony name so he sent me to paint the bullnose. The bullnose is a big metal piece embedded in the very prow of the ship. I had to grip a paint brush between my teeth, dip it into blue "paint" and paint the bullnose.

Then I had to look for land. So I stood gripping a lifeline with one hand and shading my eyes with the other and look for land. "See any land?" "No, sir, no land." "Then keep lookin!" It was so bad, the captain on the bridge called down to them and told them to get me off of there before I froze. I was out in the cold wind a good hour. I was frozen. So I went back to the aft head and sat in a bucket of ice water and forced to swallow lemon bug juice with no sugar in it and it was hot on top of it. Then I had to sing a rousing rendition of "Anchors Aweigh" and then I had to gargle the bug juice and swallow it.

Finally, they sent me to a guy with a paintbrush and more of that blue paint (it was cake frosting and blue dye). He dipped the brush in it and smacked me on the nose with it. I was now a Bluenose. That too gets entered into your record, you get a certificate and a wallet card.

I'm not sure about the Bluenose but the Shellback ceremony is very old. Goes back to at least medieval times.


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## Guest (Feb 10, 2018)

Almost forgot this one. I don't believe in the Bermuda Triangle. I think you can explain everything that's happened once you know all the facts. I sailed through it a number of times. In fact, large numbers of people do every year. The heart of the Triangle is the Sargasso Sea which I crossed through maybe a half dozen times. One thing I noticed when you enter it is that the wind tends to pick up. Nothing drastic but I could see how a sailed ship might get blown off course by those winds. Maybe that's what people encountered.

Bob Welch calls it the "pale blue sea" in his song but it isn't pale at all. It's quite dark, very dark blue.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Victor Redseal said:


> This shanty mentions something I think I forgot to cover--shame on me. The singers mention "shellbacks." What are shellbacks? A shellback is a sailor who has "crossed the line." The line in question is the Equator. A sailor who has not crossed the line is a "pollywog." Maybe two weeks before the ship is scheduled to cross the line, the crew is divided into pollywogs and shellbacks. Shellbacks are the bosses and order the pollywogs around and constantly shout the question, "WHAT ARE YOU??" And the pollywog answers, "I'm a pollywog!" One shellback is chosen to be the Royal Baby. He's generally biggest, chubbiest guy they have. We had a big ol fatty boiler tech chief. If a pollywog could touch the Royal Baby prior to crossing the line, he was automatically a shellback and wouldn't have to go through the upcoming ceremony. So the Royal Baby is guarded by the biggest, most muscular guys and their only mission is to surround the Royal Baby and let no pollywog near him. Everywhere the Royal Baby went, his entourage went and if you tried to get close, you'd get knocked on your butt.
> 
> On the day that the ship is to cross the line, the ceremony begins. The pollywogs are called to muster on the fantail. They are wearing their worst dungaree work clothes because they will be unwearable after the ceremony is over so you don't want to waste a good set. First the shellbacks blast you with a firehose on solid stream and if you think that doesn't hurt like hell you're insane. Everybody is trying to hide behind everybody else to avoid the hosing but you just end up getting stepped and fallen on. This lasts like 15 hellish minutes or so then you're marched off to the next station and a new group of pollywogs takes your place getting soaked. I can't remember everything, but we had to crawl on our knees and elbows through garbage strewn across the weatherdeck--stinking, rotting garbage that they saved up for 2 weeks for this occasion. If someone vomits in it, you just crawl through it. The weatherdeck is topped with non-skid--a very rough surface--and so your knees and elbows get sore and raw very quickly. The shellbacks stand there with rubber hoses and if they see you put any part of your body on the deck other than knee or elbow, they whack your butt with their length of hose and they do it hard while screaming, "WHAT ARE YOU??" "I'm a pollywog!" "WHAT??" "I'm a pollywog!!"
> 
> ...


Good gracious!!!! 
I think I shall always remember now what 'shellback' means...


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## Guest (Feb 10, 2018)

The purpose of these ceremonies as with all rituals and ceremonies is to enforce communal standards through bonding. Once you're a Shellback or Bluenose, you've proven yourself a worthy sailor and a dependable mate. You're less likely to mess up, less likely to give the command any grief and more likely to be supportive of your shipmates and to always have their backs. So it builds trust and camaraderie and your own self-esteem as a sailor. You're less likely to tolerate those who don't pull their own weight or who don't seem to much give a f--k. Many navies do these ceremonies and it isn't unusual for crews of several allied countries' navies to combine the ceremony and festivities on one ship.


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## Guest (Feb 24, 2018)

I forgot about this one from the first Steeleye Span album I ever bought. I must have been 15 or 16.






It would be years before I understood these old songs of ladies lamenting that their men were gone to sea until I went to sea myself but their's was nothing compared to the lamenting I did.


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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

A proggy take on a sea song.

Gentle Giant - His Last Voyage






Lyrics:

Rose in early morning, as the light came through
Searching in the ocean, did what he should do
Seeking not adventure, just a way of life
Sky above turned grey, wind cut like a knife

This was his last voyage, this was his last time

Pulling up the anchor, letting go the rope
Age rules over all things, fate rules over hope

Then as bow was broken, water soon to rise
For they would have nothing, Nature's trust unwise
Through his boat and fortune, not for him that day
If he went to God, for him they would pray

As the tempest thundered, as the storm broke free
Suddenly in darkness, fear there none to see
Visions in his memory, what was meant to be
When the storm was over, nothing could be seen
Life and boat were taken, God knows what it means

Rose in early morning, as the light came through
Searching in the ocean, did what he should do

This was his last voyage, this was his last time


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

Stan Rogers was epic. Barrett's Privateers is a fave of mine.






Steeleye Span. Wonderful music. Lost count of the number of times I've seen em live. This isn't a shanty but if you appreciate the style you'll understand why I posted it.


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## Guest (Feb 24, 2018)




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## LezLee (Feb 21, 2014)

This is a great album by unlikely people such as Sting, Lou Reed, Nick Cave etc.
The whole album is on YouTube.
Here's 'Lowlands Away' by Rufus Wainwright and his mum Kate McGarrigle






I'm sure you all know ' The Good Ship Venus (Loudon Wainwright) is not for sensitive souls!


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## Guest (Feb 26, 2018)

How could I forget this one? Saw them do it live too.


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## Guest (Feb 26, 2018)

Nobody else was posting it so...


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## Guest (Feb 26, 2018)

I've always suspected that Wainright's song was influenced by S. Clay Wilson's seafarin' comix in Zap. I first bought copies of these when I was 16. The local headshop sold them and I think I bought the entire catalog. But these stood out. I showed them to my friends who flipped out over them:

http://images.tcj.com/2015/01/Zap-Vol.-1-158.jpg

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_lSk4AbYU4tY/S1xARnMMwSI/AAAAAAAABXQ/ZkenJebv8jA/s1600/ZapComix03-4-b06.jpg

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MEQ1H3HO1rY/TXJz-5c1ynI/AAAAAAAAAY8/9ZlFy2P2FvM/s1600/sclaywilson04.gif

http://thumbs.ebaystatic.com/d/l600/pict/361913204162_1.jpg


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## LezLee (Feb 21, 2014)

Wiki says:

"It is possible that this song was inspired by an actual event, where a female convict (Charlotte Badger), sailing on the colonial brigantine Venus, convinced members of the crew to commandeer the vessel, sailing from Port Dalrymple in Van Diemens Land (now Tasmania) in 1806."

My favourite is the Sex Pistols :


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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

Again, not a sea shanty, but it is a song about the sea.

Kansas - The Point of No Return

I heard the men saying something
The captains tell they pay you well
And they say they need sailing men to
Show the way, and leave today
Was it you that said
"How long, how long?"

They say the sea turns so dark that
You know it's time, you see the sign
They say the point Demons Guard is
An ocean grave, for all the brave
Was it you that said
"How long, how long
How long to the point of know return?"

Your father, he said he needs you
Your mother, she says she loves you
Your brothers, they echo your words:
"How far to the point of know return?"
"Well, how long?"

Today I found a message floating
In the sea from you to me
You wrote that when you could see it
You cried with fear, the Point was near
Was it you that said
"How long, how long
To the Point of Know Return?"


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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

Another prog song, and a quite beautiful one at that, King Crimson - Islands.

Very peaceful, and somewhat melancholy.






Earth, stream and tree encircled by sea
Waves sweep the sand from my island.
My sunsets fade.
Field and glade wait only for rain
Grain after grain love erodes my
High weathered walls which fend off the tide
Cradle the wind
to my island.

Gaunt granite climbs where gulls wheel and glide
Mournfully glide o'er my island.
My dawn bride's veil, damp and pale,
Dissolves in the sun.
Love's web is spun - cats prowl, mice run
Wreathe snatch-hand briars where owls know my eyes
Violet skies
Touch my island,
Touch me.

Beneath the wind turned wave
Infinite peace
Islands join hands
'Neathe heaven's sea.

Dark harbour quays like fingers of stone
Hungrily reach from my island.
Clutch sailor's words - pearls and gourds
Are strewn on my shore.
Equal in love, bound in circles.
Earth, stream and tree return to the sea
Waves sweep sand from my island,
from me.﻿


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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

They keep coming to me.

And yet another prog song, again by Gentle Giant, "Wreck". Not sure how I forgot about this one?

The ship's rising up from the sea to the sky heyeheh Hold on
Just one sorry scream and a desperate cry heyeheh Hold on
Their lives pass before them before they die heyeheh --

The sea yawns around like a boiling hell heyeheh hold on
And souls disappear with the toll of that bell heyeheh hold on
The arms of the sea they are dragging them down heyeheh hold on
And sorrows and sins they are lost as they drown heyeheh --

How strange when you think that the sea was their way;
And a meaningless death is the price they pay
For their living was made from the deep
To their people in comfort and keep
Keep all their people and places there
Never to be seen again, never to be loved and their last embrace --
And the kiss has a salt bitter taste

Now all that remains is the deep cruel sea heyeheh hold on
And wreckage of things that used to be heyeheh hold on
No stone marks the place of that watery grave heyeheh hold on
Together they die both the weak and the brave heyeheh hold on

The arms of the sea they are dragging them down heyeheh hold on
And sorrows and sins they are lost as they drown heyeheh hold on


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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

I believe this is a traditional folk song.

Here is a great version by Steeleye Span, "Gallant Frigate Amphitrite".






Our gallant ship the Amphitrite, she lay in Plymouth Sound
Blue Peter at the fore-mast head for she was outward bound
We were waiting there for orders to send us far from home
Our orders came for Rio, and thence around Cape Horn

When we arrived at Rio we prepared for heavy gales
We set up all our rigging, boys, and bent on all new sails
From ship to ship they cheered us as we did sail along
And wished us pleasant weather in the rounding of Cape Horn

When beating off Magellan it blew exceeding hard
While shortening sail, two gallant tars fell from the tops'l yard
By angry seas the ropes we threw from their poor hands was torn
We were forced to leave them for the sharks that prowl around Cape Horn

When we got round the Horn, my boys, we had some glorious days
And very soon our killick dropped into Valparaiso Bay
The pretty girls came round in flocks, I solemnly declare
They're far before the Plymouth girls with their long and their curly hair

For they love a jolly sailor when he spends his money free
They'll laugh and sing and merry merry be and have a jovial spree
And when your money is all gone, they won't on you impose
They're not like the Plymouth girls that'll pawn and sell your clothes

Farewell to Valparaiso, and farewell for a while
Likewise to all your Spanish girls along the coast of Chile
And if ever I live to be paid off, I'll sit and'll sing this song
God bless those pretty Spanish girls we left around Cape Horn


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## Guest (Feb 27, 2018)

This one is quite beautiful...and sad.

I am on an open sea
Just drifting as the hours go slowly by
Julie with her open blouse
Is gazing up into the empty sky.

Now it seems to be so strange here
Now its so blue
The still sea is darker than before...

No wind disturbs our coloured sail
The radio is silent, so are we
Julies head is on her arm
Her fingers brush the surface of the sea.

Now I wonder if well be seen here
Or if time has left us all alone
The still sea is darker than before..


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## Guest (Mar 1, 2018)




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## Guest (Mar 1, 2018)




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## Guest (Mar 1, 2018)




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## Guest (Mar 1, 2018)

Wow. I activated some long inert brain cells to dredge this one up from my memory.


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## Guest (Mar 1, 2018)

I posted this earlier but that link has long been dead so here it is again. That's a Daboll trumpet foghorn.


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