Maritime/Nautical Lyrics

[Guest]

 

[Ishmael]

"The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald"

Ishmael

 

[RosevilleCAguy]

"Southern Cross"

 

[Nora]

The Keeper of the Eddystone Light

 

[Guest]

For my Mermaid...

 

[Ishmael]

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

by Gordon Lightfoot

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
of the big lake they called "Gitche Gumee."
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
when the skies of November turn gloomy.
With a load of iron ore twenty-six thousand tons more
than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty,
that good ship and true was a bone to be chewed
when the "Gales of November" came early.

The ship was the pride of the American side
coming back from some mill in Wisconsin.
As the big freighters go, it was bigger than most
with a crew and good captain well seasoned,
concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms
when they left fully loaded for Cleveland.
And later that night when the ship's bell rang,
could it be the north wind they'd been feelin'?

The wind in the wires made a tattle-tale sound
and a wave broke over the railing.
And ev'ry man knew, as the captain did too
'twas the witch of November come stealin'.
The dawn came late and the breakfast had to wait
when the Gales of November came slashin'.
When afternoon came it was freezin' rain
in the face of a hurricane west wind.

When suppertime came the old cook came on deck sayin'.
"Fellas, it's too rough t'feed ya."
At seven P.M. a main hatchway caved in; he said,
"Fellas, it's bin good t'know ya!"
The captain wired in he had water comin' in
and the good ship and crew was in peril.
And later that night when 'is lights went outta sight
came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Does any one know where the love of God goes
when the waves turn the minutes to hours?
The searchers all say they'd have made Whitefish Bay
if they'd put fifteen more miles behind 'er.
They might have split up or they might have capsized;
they may have broke deep and took water.
And all that remains is the faces and the names
of the wives and the sons and the daughters.

Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings
in the rooms of her ice-water mansion.
Old Michigan steams like a young man's dreams;
the islands and bays are for sportsmen.
And farther below Lake Ontario
takes in what Lake Erie can send her,
And the iron boats go as the mariners all know
with the Gales of November remembered.

In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed,
in the "Maritime Sailors' Cathedral."
The church bell chimed 'til it rang twenty-nine times
for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
of the big lake they call "Gitche Gumee."
"Superior," they said, "never gives up her dead
when the gales of November come early!"

 

[CoolidgEffect]

John Kanekanek

I thought I heard the Old Man say
(Pull!) John Kanakanaka too rye yea
Today, today is a holiday
(Pull!) John Kanakanaka too rye yea
Too rye yea whoa-o too rye yea (whoo!)
John Kanakanaka too rye yea

There's work tomorrow but no work today...
For today, today is a holiday...

Oh growl ye may but go you must...
If you growl too loud your head they'll bust...

Around Cape Horn our ship must go...
Around Cape Horn through the ice and snow...

My dear old Mum she wrote to me...
Oh son, my son come home from sea...

Now one more pull and then belay...
For today, today is a holiday...

 

[Guest]

And another for my Mermaid...my love...

 

[Tati]

Toad The Wet Sprocket

Walk On The Ocean

 

[Minkey Boodle]

The length of your stroke is more important than the size of your cox(swain).

 

[phrodeau]

Blow High, Blow Low

The people who live on the land
Are hard to understand.
When you're lookin' for fun they clap you into jail!
So I'm shippin' off to sea,
Where life is gay and free
And a feller can flip
A hook in the hip of a whale.

Blow high, blow low!
A-whalin' we will go!
We'll go a-whalin', a-sailin' away.
Away we'll go,
Blow me high and low!
For many and many a long, long day,
For many and many a long, long day!

It's wonderful just to feel
Your hands upon a wheel
And to listen to wind a-whistlin' in a sail,
Or to climb aloft and be
The very first to see
A chrysanthemum spout come out o' the snout of a whale.

Blow high, blow low!
A-whalin' we will go!
We'll go a-whalin', a-sailin' away.
Away we'll go,
Blow me high and low!
For many and many a long, long day,
For many and many a long, long day!

A-rockin' upon the sea,
Your boat will seem to be
Like a dear little baby in her bassinet,
For she hasn't learned to walk
And she hasn't learned to talk,
And her little behind
Is kind of inclined to be wet!

Blow high, blow low!
A-whalin' we will go!
We'll go a-whalin', a-sailin' away.
Away we'll go,
Blow me high and low!
For many and many a long, long day,
For many and many a long, long day!

---from "Carousel", by Oscar Hammerstein II, music by Richard Rodgers.

 

[Tati]

One More I forgot about...

Blues Image..."Ride Captain Ride"

Seventy-three men sailed up
From the San Francisco Bay,
Rolled off of their ship
And here's what they had to say.
"We're callin' everyone to ride along
To another shore,
We can laugh our lives away
and be free once more."
But no one heard them callin',
No one came at all,
'Cause they were too busy watchin'
Those old raindrops fall.
As a storm was blowin'
Out on the peaceful sea,
Seventy-three men sailed off
To history.
Ride, captain ride
Upon your mystery ship,
Be amazed at the friends
You have here on your trip.
Ride captain ride
Upon your mystery ship,
On your way to a world
That others might have missed.
(Instrumental)
Seventy-three men sailed up
From the San Francisco Bay,
Got off their ship
And here's what they had to say.
"We're callin' everyone to ride along
To another shore,
We can laugh our lives away
And be free once more."
Ride, captain ride
Upon your mystery ship,
Be amazed at the friends
You have here on your trip.
Ride, captain ride
Upon your mystery ship,
On your way to a world
That others might have missed.
Ride, captain ride
Upon your mystery ship,
Be amazed at the friends
You have here on your trip.

 

[horny_giraffe]

Sailing by Christopher Cross.

 

[Minkey Boodle]

Power 10 for your mother!
1
C'mon you slow bitches!
2
Get the rate up to 38!
3
Pull me to the finish line!
4
Keep this shit steady!
5
Don't quit on me now!!
6
Long and strong, y'all!
7
Keep that rate up!
8
We're almost there!
9
Move it! Move it!
10
That's what I'm talkin' about!

 

[Nora]

Sailing by Christopher Cross.

That song falls into the "so cheesy it's good" category.

 

[S.Daedalus]

THE TRAGICALLY HIP

"Nautical Disaster"

I had this dream where I relished
The fray and the screaming that filled my head all day
It was as though I'd been spit there, settled in , into a pocket
Of a lighthouse off some rocky socket,
Off the coast of France, Dear

One afternoon, four thousand men died in the water here
Five hundred more were thrashing madly as parasites might in you blood
Now I was in lifeboat designed for ten and ten and only,
Anything that systematic would get you hated.
It's not a deal nor a test nor a love of something fated.
The selection was quick, the crew was picked and
those left in the water got kicked off our pant leg and we headed for home.

Then the dream ends when the phone rings
You doing alright he said it's out there ,most days and nights
But only a fool would complain
Anyway Susan if you like our conversation is as faint as the sound in my memory
As those fingernails scratching on the hull

 

[Guest]

And how could I forget...

 

[WaxNWane]

Re: Toad The Wet Sprocket

Walk On The Ocean

I love you.

 

[WaxNWane]

Brilliant, literary song - lots of Coleridge influence

Sting
The Wild Wild Sea

I saw it again this evening,
Black sail in a pale yellow sky
And just as before in a moment,
It was gone where the grey gulls fly

If it should happen again I shall worry
That only a strange ship could fly
And my sanity scans the horizon
In the light of a darkening sky

That night as I walked in my slumber
I walked into the sea strand
And I swam with the moon and her lover
Until I lost sight of the land

I swam till the night became morning
Black sea in the reddening sky
Found myself on the deck on a rolling ship
So far where no grey gulls fly

All around me was silence
As if mocking my frail human hopes
And a question mark hung in the canvas
For the wind that had died in the ropes

I may have slept for an hour
I may have slept for a day
For a woke in a bed of white linen
And the sky was the colour of clay

At first just a rustle of canvas
And the gentlest breath on my face
But a galloping line of white horses
Said that soon we were in for a race

The gentle sigh turned to a howling
And the grey sky she angered to black
And my anxious eyes searched the horizon
With the gathering sea at my back

Did I see the shade of a sailor
On the bridge through the wheelhouse pane
Held fast to the wheel of the rocking ship
As I squinted my eyes in the rain

For the ship had turned into the wind
Against the storm to brace
And underneath the sailor's hat
I saw my father's face

If a prayer today is spoken
Please offer it for me
When the bridge to heaven is broken
And you've lost on the wild wild sea
Lost on the wild wild sea...

 

[WaxNWane]

It's an instrumental album - but a great one by an amazing band.

 

[WaxNWane]

And a couple more from the Soul Cages CD -

The Soul Cages
The boy child is locked in the fisherman's yard
There's a bloodless moon where the ocean died
A shoal of nightstars hang fire in the nets
And the chaos of cages where the crayfish lie

Where is the fisherman, where is the goat?
Where is the keeper in his carrion coat?
Eclipse on the moon when the dark bird flies
Where is the child with his father's eyes?

There are the soul cages
These are the soul cages

He's the king of the ninth world
The twisted son of the fog bells toll
In each and every lobster cage
A tortured human soul

These are the souls of broken factories
The subject slaves of the broken crown
The dead accounting of old guilty promises
These are the souls of the broken town

These are the soul cages
These are the soul cages
These are the soul cages
These are the soul cages

'I have a wager' the brave child spoke
The fisherman laughed, though disturbed at the joke
'You will drink what I drink but you must equal me
And if the drink leaves me standing,
A soul shall go free'

'I have here a cask of most magical wine
A vintage that blessed every ship in the line
It's wrung from the blood of the sailor's who died
Young white bodies adrift in the tide'

'And what's in it for me my pretty young thing?
Why should I whistle, when the caged bird sings?
If you lose a wager with the king of the sea
You'll spend the rest of forever in the cage with me'

These are the soul cages
These are the soul cages
These are the soul cages
These are the soul cages

A body lies open in the fisherman's yard
Like the side of a ship where the iceberg rips
One less soul in the soul cages
One last curse on the fisherman's lips

These are the soul cages
These are the soul cages
These are the soul cages
These are the soul cages

Swim to the light Swim to the light

He dreamed of the ship on the sea
It would carry his father and he
To a place they could never be found
To a place far away from this town
A Newcastle ship without coals
They would sail to the island of souls



Island Of Souls
Billy was born within sight of the shipyard
First son of a riveter's son
And Billy was raised as the ship grew a shadow
Her great hull would blot out the light of the sun

And six days a week he would watch his poor father
A working man live like a slave
He'd drink every night and he'd dream of a future,
Of money he never would save
And Billy would cry when he thought of the future

Soon came a day when the bottle was broken
They launched the great ship out to sea
He felt he'd been left on a desolate shore
To a future he desperately wanted to flee
What else was there for a shipbuilder's son
A new ship to be built, new work to be done

One day he dreamed of the ship in the world
It would carry his father and he
To a place they would never be found
To a place far away from this town.

Trapped in the cage of the skeleton ship
All the workmen suspended like flies
Caught in the flare of acetylene light
A working man works till the industry dies
And Billy would cry when he thought if the future

Then what they call an industrial accident
Crushed those it couldn't forgive
They brought Billy's father back home in an ambulance
A brass watch, a cheque, maybe three weeks to live,
And what else was there for a riveter's son
A new ship to be built, new work to be done

That night, he dreamed of the ship in the world
It would carry his father and he
To a place they could never be found
To a place far away from this town,
A Newcastle ship without coals
They would sail to the island of souls.

 

[kotori]

"The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald"

Damn, that was the first one to pop into my head.

When I was a kid, my father had Richard Rogers' Victory at Sea score. I liked listening to that, all insturmental, of course.

 

[Lost Cause]

J.D.........

Calypso

To sail on a dream on a crystal clear ocean
To ride on the crest of a wild raging storm
To work in the service of life and the living
In search of the answers to questions unknown
To be part of the movement and part of the growing
Part of beginning to understand
Aye, Calypso, the places you've been to
The things that you've shown us
The stories you tell
Aye, Calypso, I sing to your spirit
The men who have served you
So long and so well

Like the dolphin who guides you
You bring us beside you
To light up the darkness and show us the way
For though we are strangers in your silent world
To live on the land we must learn from the sea
To be true as the tide
And free as the wind-swell
Joyful and loving in letting it be

Aye, Calypso, the places you've been to
The things that you've shown us
The stories you tell
Aye, Calypso, I sing to your spirit
The men who have served you
So long and so well

Aye, Calypso, the places you've been to
The things that you've shown us
The stories you tell
Aye, Calypso, I sing to your spirit
The men who have served you
So long and so well!

 

[Nora]

Ermm...I can't believe nobody's posted "Closer to Home" by..I think it was Grand Funk.

 

[QuickDuck]

The boy stood on the burning deck,
ankle high in charcoal....

oh wait, not the lyrics you meant

Gonna agree big time with old Grommit boy... Sting rocks.