It freshened up till it blew like thunder
And burrowed her deep, lee-scuppers under.
The old man said, ‘I mean to hang on
Till her canvas busts or her sticks are gone’—
Which the blushing looney did, till at last
Overboard went her mizzen-mast.
Hear the yarn of a sailor,
An old yarn learned at sea.
Then a fierce squall struck the ‘Loch Achray’
And bowed her down to her water-way;
Her main-shrouds gave and her forestay,
And a green sea carried her wheel away;
Ere the watch below had time to dress
She was cluttered up in a blushing mess.
Hear the yarn of a sailor,
An old yarn learned at sea.
She couldn’t lay-to nor yet pay-off,
And she got swept clean in the bloody trough;
Her masts were gone, and afore you knowed
She filled by the head and down she goed.
Her crew made seven-and-twenty dishes
For the big jack-sharks and the little fishes,
And over their bones the water swishes.
Hear the yarn of a sailor,
An old yarn learned at sea.
The wives and girls they watch in the rain
For a ship as won’t come home again.
‘I reckon it’s them head-winds,’ they say,
‘She’ll be home to-morrow, if not to-day.
I’ll just nip home ’n’ I’ll air the sheets
’N’ buy the fixins ’n’ cook the meats
As my man likes ’n’ as my man eats.’
So home they goes by the windy streets,
Thinking their men are homeward bound
With anchors hungry for English ground,
And the bloody fun of it is, they’re drowned!
Hear the yarn of a sailor,
An old yarn learned at sea.
SING A SONG O’ SHIPWRECK
He lolled on a bollard, a sun-burned son of the sea,
With ear-rings of brass and a jumper of dungaree,
‘ ’N’ many a queer lash-up have I seen,’ says he.
‘But the toughest hooray o’ the racket,’ he says, ‘I’ll be sworn,
’N’ the roughest traverse I worked since the day I was born,
Was a packet o’ Sailor’s Delight as I scoffed in the seas o’ the Horn.
‘All day long in the calm she had rolled to the swell,
Rolling through fifty degrees till she clattered her bell;
’N’ then came snow, ’n’ a squall, ’n’ a wind was colder ’n hell.