ON THE MIDDLE GROUND

Lyrics © Don Brian; Music: John Warner (2013)

The Middle Ground refers to a whaling region between New Zealand, Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands. Don wrote the song on Norfolk while researching the many visits of American whaling ships between 1790 and 1907. Norfolk was popular for watering and recruiting, and safer than the sailor towns of Sydney, Hobart Town or Russell where captains risked losing their crew. Captains’ wives often stayed for prolonged periods, giving birth there and sharing their domestic skills with local women.

THE WIND AND THE WAVES

Lyrics and Music © Simon Cocker / Matt Woolley (2010)

From Loveless in Hobart Town, a folk-song cycle about the trials and tribulations of George Loveless, written and produced by the Tasmanian Grassroots Union Choir. Loveless, a methodist preacher and Tolpuddle Martyr, was transported to Van Diemens Land in 1834.

ASSISTED PASSAGE (The Whaling Barque)

Lyrics and Music © Harry Robertson (1971)

The Third Fleet of convict transport ships to Australia was mostly vessels with approval to go whaling after disposing of their human cargo. Seal skins, whale oil and bone were the first significant exports from the infant colony.

MOLLYMAUK

Lyrics and Music © Bob Watson (1987)

The song has become universally popular among singers of maritime songs. Its haunting tune and imagery emphasise the vastness of the southern oceans. The Mollymauks are group of albatross species found only in the Southern Hemisphere with wingspans ranging between 1.8 and 2.6 metres. Bob Watson wrote in Readifolk in 2012, “The ability of these birds to navigate in such inhospitable places gave rise to wonderment and also much legend and superstition”.

NANTUCKET GIRLS’ SONG

Words: Eliza Spencer Brock (1855); Tune: Traditional

A whimsical look at the lives of sailors’ wives from the journal of Eliza Spencer Brock. Eliza’s husband was the master of the Nantucket ship Lexington on a Pacific whaling voyage (1843-56). The words were written by Martha Ford, wife of Dr Samuel Hayward Ford, first surgeon in the Bay of Islands, New Zealand.

I have made up my mind now to be a Sailor’s wife,
With a purse full of money and a very easy life,
For a clever sailor husband is so seldom at his home,
That his wife can spend the dollars with a will that’s all her own
His wife can spend the dollars with a will that’s all her own

Then I’ll haste to wed a sailor, and send him off to sea,
For a life of independence is the pleasant life for me,
Though, every now and then, I should like to see his face,
Because it always seems to me to beam with manly grace
Because it always seems to her to beam with manly grace

With his brow so nobly open, and his dark and kindly eye,
Oh my heart beats fondly towards him whenever he is nigh,
But when he says “Goodbye my love, I’m off across the sea”
First I cry for his departure, then I laugh because I’m free
First she cries for his departure, then she laughs because she’s free

Yet I’ll welcome him most gladly, whenever he returns
And share with him so cheerfully the money that he earns
For he is a loving husband, though he leads a roving life
And well I know how good it is to be a Sailor’s Wife.
And well she knows how good it is to be a sailor’s wife.

I have made up my mind now to be a Sailor’s wife,
With a purse full of money and a very easy life,
For a clever sailor husband is so seldom at his home,
That his wife can spend the dollars with a will that’s all her own
His wife can spend the dollars with a will that’s all her own

BOUNTY PACKET SHIP

Traditional (pre 1820)

First published in Danish in Internationale Sømands-Opsange: “Chanties” med danske Variationer, Oscar Jensen, 1923. It is a very early pump shanty predating the discovery of the Bounty mutineers at Pitcairn in 1808. This
version from Stan Hugill gives a jaunty account of the 1789 Mutiny on the Bounty and the notorious Captain William Bligh, “Billy Blight”.

LET THE LOWER LIGHTS BE BURNING

Philip P. Bliss (1871)

This American composition has become part of Norfolk Island’s maritime hymn tradition. We imagine whalers singing it as they rowed back to shore, their way lit by fires on the cliffs, as described in Harry Robertson’s song, ‘Norfolk Whalers’.

SAILORS’ CONSOLATION

Words: William Pitt (1826); Tune: Traditional

First published in the Universal Songster, 1826 and set to the tune ‘Miss Tickle Toby’s School’ (also used for ‘Jog Along ‘til Shearing’). The song is also called ‘Jack Tar’s Yarn’ in the whaling Journal of R.E. Buffett, a Norfolk Islander sailing on the whaler Canton II in 1884. It is often attributed to Charles Dibden, who did publish this with other songs, and who also wrote a different song with the same title.

The night came on a hurricane, the seas were mountains rolling,
When Barney Buntline turned his quid, and says to Billy Bowline:
“A strong Nor’ Wester’s blowing Bill, hark can’t you hear it roar now?
Oh Lordy, how I pities them unhappy folks ashore now.”

And it’s Bow wow wow
Rum toddy, rum toddy, Bow wow wow

“Foolhardy chaps as lives in towns, what dangers they are all in,
Now lie a-quaking in their beds, for fear their roofs might fall in,
Poor creatures, how they envies us and wishes, I’ve a notion,
For our good luck, in such a storm, to be out on the ocean.”

“And as for them who’re out all day on business from their houses,
And late at night returning home to cheer their babes and spouses,
While you and I, Bill, on the deck are comfortably lying,
My eyes – what tiles and chimney pots about their heads are flying.”

“And very often have we heard how men are killed – and undone,
By overturns of carriages, by thieves and fires in London,
We knows what risks all landsmen run, from noblemen to tailors,
So Bill, let us thank Providence – that you and I are sailors!”

BOB MARNEY

Traditional (c.1890s)

Bob Marney was lost from the Grecian in 1853. Having harpooned a whale off Macquarie Harbour on Tasmania’s West coast, his boat was taken on a “Nantucket sleigh ride” and never seen again. This is a composite of versions from the singing of Jack Davies, a Hobart Town whaler recorded in 1961, printed verses from Harry O’May, and from Capt. Cracknell who recorded a version in 1926. His uncle had captained the Grecian. The tune is ‘Lady Franklin’s Lament’.

WHALING WIFE

Lyrics and Music © Harry Robertson (1971)

Harry wrote “A great number of people connected with the Whaling Industry never go whaling. In 1950-51 some twelve thousand men of various nationalities operated in the Antarctic season… So we find, scattered throughout the world, thousands of people who know of, and depend upon, the return of whaling men and the result of a good catch – such is the Whaling Wife.”

Aye! I’m waiting here at hame and I always feel the same
Whenever my guid man goes tae the whaling,
Seven months he’ll be awa’ doon amongst the ice and snow
And there’s times my lonely heart is nearly breaking.

Now it’s time the kids were fed, and I’ll put them into bed,
And to them a story then I might be telling,
That their Daddy’s gone tae sea, to buy food for them and me,
And it’s many whales we hope he will be catching.

If the whaling catch is fine, we will have an easy time,
New clothes and food we ought to have in plenty,
But if the blubber’s thin on the Blue Whale and the Fin,
Then for us between the seasons could be scanty.

So it’s waiting that I am, and I’m thinking of my man,
And the pleasure when I know that he’s returning,
But in case ye should forget — he hasna’ come hame yet,
And wi’ tears my eyes at times are fairly burning.

SHIP REPAIRING MEN

Lyrics and Music © Harry Robertson (1995)

Harry came to Australia from Scotland around 1952. He was a ships engineer in the 20th century mechanised whaling industry in the South Atlantic, then out of Moreton Bay, Ballina and Norfolk Island. He later worked at Brisbane’s Kangaroo Point dockyard. The song represents an often-overlooked side of the maritime industry.

From the workshop off we go, toolkits heavy in our hands,
To a big ship that’s come in, from a trip to foreign lands,
Salty streaks of rust have marked her, but her moorings hold her tight,
And we’ll work to fix her engines, all today and half the night.

Don’t wait up for me this evening — I’ll be out all night again
Working on the Brisbane River with the ship repairing men.

Oil-fired boilers throb with power, drinking up the furnace heat,
Water turns to driving steam to make the engines beat,
But the feed pump’s sighing wail to us cuts through all other sound,
As it sings a song of triumph, for the valves that we have ground.

Engine bearings that knocked and hammered through the wild and stormy seas,
Will be machined and fitted ’til they run with silent ease,
And that winch that rattles every time the piston turns the shaft,
Will hum along and sing its song, to men skilled in their craft.

When you see an ocean liner, glide between the river banks,
And the Captain in his gold braid orders men of lesser ranks,
Have you thought perhaps this stately craft might never sail again,
If it wasn’t for the toil and sweat, of ship repairing men.

OCEAN LINER

Words & Music © Barry Skipsey (1979)

An autobiographical tale, written on a prawning trawler in Exmouth Gulf, 1270km north of Perth, West Australia. As a lad seeking adventure, Barry found work on a twenty-one metre Learmonth K trawler. He now lives in land-locked Alice Springs, almost as far away from water as is possible in Australia.

BLOOD RED ROSES

Traditional (1830s)

Neil Colquhoun says this song was collected by John Leebrick from “the dau­ghter of a former captain of an American whaleship which had operated around the New Zealand coast during the 1830s”. The shanty is commonly reported to be used for hauling down on stays’l halliards. It was noted in Captain R.C. Adams in On Board the Rocket (1879) as ‘Come down you bunch of roses’.

THE BIRCHGROVE PARK

Poem © Merv Lilley (1963); Tune: Bill Berry

The Birchgrove Park, a ‘Miller’s Sixty Miler’ of 640 tons, was carrying coal from Newcastle to Sydney in July 1956 but foundered off the Barrenjoey Light in a southerly buster. At the time eight bodies were recovered but two others also drowned; four were saved. The hatches were not properly covered and let water in; the coal moved in the swell increasing the list from uneven loading.

The night fell dark on the quiet sea
The Birchgrove Park rode restlessly
A collier on the short run down
Of nineteen men there were eight men who drowned

A sudden lurch as she slid below
The way that all the colliers go
If home bound men had battened down
There’d be eight good men who would not have drowned

Oh Sydney waters are green and cold
Take life from men with a freezing hold
They say that men on the colliers drown
When the cargo rolls – not battened down

Oh beckoning lights of Sydney Town
Still beckoning men as the ship goes down
It is for the love of your winking lights
That colliers drown on lonely nights

A NAUTICAL YARN

Poem: Keighley Goodchild (1883) Tune: Traditional (The Dreadnought)

From Who Are You, a volume of poems by Keighley Goodchild, an editor at the Echuca Advertiser. Ian Mudie in his book, Riverboats, suggests “it is so different from the rest of Goodchild’s work that it seems quite likely that he heard it on the riverboats or in the pubs of Echuca – and wrote it down as his own”. Well-known Murray River Captain, Gus Pierce may have been the inspiration.

“I sing of a captain not unknown to fame;
A naval commander, Bill Jinks was his name,
Who sailed where the Murray’s clear waters do flow,
Did this freshwater shellback, with his Yeo heave a ho.”

With his Yeo ho, yeo heave a ho
With his Yeo ho, yeo heave a ho

To the Port of Wahgunyah his vessel was bound
When night came upon him and darkness around;
Not a star on the waters its clear light did throw;
But the vessel sped onward with a Yeo heave a ho.

“Oh! Captain, oh! Captain, let’s make for the shore,
For the seas they do rage and the winds they do roar!”
“Nay, nay,” said the captain, “though the fierce winds may blow
I’ll stick to me vessel with a Yeo heave a ho.”

“Oh! Captain, oh! Captain, the waves sweep the deck,
Oh Captain, oh! Captain, we’ll soon be a wreck
To the river’s deep bosom each seaman will go!”
But the Captain laughed lightly, with his Yeo heave a ho.

“Farewell to the maiden, the girl I adore;
Farewell to my friends, I shall see them no more!”
The crew shrieked in terror, the Captain he swore.
We had stuck on a sandbank, so the men walked ashore.
With a Yeo, ho, Yeo heave a ho
With a Yeo, ho, Yeo heave a ho
With a Yeo, ho, Yeo heave a ho

THE BALLAD OF THE CATALPA

Traditional (c.1876)

This ballad, telling of the intrepid rescue of six Irish prisoners from Fremantle Gaol by an American ship in the guise of a whaler, was collected by Russel Ward from Victor Courtney, for many years editor of the Perth Sunday Times. As a young reporter Courtney heard the Catalpa in a Fremantle waterside pub sung (perhaps at the risk of gaol time for sedition) to the ‘Botany Bay’ tune. Other tunes are ‘Tarpaulin Jacket’ and, more commonly, to ‘Rosin the Bow’.

BRINGING THE BEER TO BROOME

Lyrics and Music © Peter Lenne (1966)

Peter says he wrote the song after reading about a seafarer, Andy, who delivered beer to Broome and mysteriously disappeared at sea. In the folk tradition we take him at his word. It was first performed at the Melbourne University Song Contest in 1968.

NETS BELOW THE GANGWAY

Poem: E.J. Brady (1909); Tune: Traditional

Published in The Ways of Many Waters. In the shanty ‘South Australia’ she-oak is the term used in the 1890s for bush beer and around this time the safety nets below the gangway were known as ‘she-oak nets’.

They cast ’em down at Plymouth where the water’s deep and cool
And they drop ’em round from Melbourne to the wharves of Liverpool
There are nets for shallow waters where the brown sand-mullet be
But the net below the gangway is the net for you and me

So ye rowdy, roaring devils with your roaring, rowdy song
When we’ve rolled for recreation with our sweethearts round the town;
When a sailor’s had a skinful and he staggers back from shore
There’s a net below the gangway for to catch you if you fall

So they “shoot” them in the Hudson, in the Thames and at the Tay
They’re “cast” in Sydney Harbour and in San Francisco Bay.
Oh, the net below the gangway it is sweeter for our togs
Than the slush about the Bridges, or around the Isle of Dogs

Oh, ’tis better that we gather in the meshes of the trawls”
Where a drunken shellback flounders, where a swearing man-crab crawls
Than the bubbles at the surface, than a splashing in the dark
Than a drag-hooked, bloated boozer, or a picnic for John Shark.

So ye rowdy, roaring devils with your roaring, rowdy song
When we’ve rolled for recreation with our sweethearts round the town;
’tis pleasant to remember when we’re blind and cannot see
That the net below the gangway will be kind to you and me

AT SEA (John Smith AB)

Words: D.H. Rogers (1904); Tune: N. Colquhoun

The entries in ships’ logs, listing only the time and place of a sailor lost at sea, are the basis of this song, published in The Bulletin under the pen-name of Taiwa M.L. (taiwa means ‘spud’ or ‘foreigner’ in Māori & M.L. is Maori Land.) Rogers was a Dunedin accountant, writing for Sydney papers at the same time as Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson. The last verse is omitted in previously recorded versions. The tune is from Neil Colquhoun’s New Zealand Folksongs, 1956.

ROSE BAY FERRY

Lyrics and Music © Bernard Bolan (1973)

The imaginary lives of ‘city sailors’ still resonates in the TikTok shanty generation. This song reached #1 on the charts in 1974. The Nicholson Brothers operated ferries on Sydney Harbour at that time. The ferries and the fares may have changed but the morning commute remains as enjoyable today.

SOUTH AUSTRALIA

Traditional (1876)

As collected by Fredrick Pease Harlow in 1876. Harlow was on the Akbar at Melbourne and recorded his reminiscences in The Making of a Sailor (Salem Research Society, 1928). The term ‘she-oak’, for ‘bush beer’ dates this song to the 1880s. The Sandridge Railway Pier is now the Port Melbourne Pier.

ACROSS THE LINE (The Sailor’s Way)

Traditional (c.1890s)

Our final song is a love song to the sea and inspired the album title. Recalled by James Cowan in the New Zealand Lyttleton Times 1912 and developed by Neil Colquhoun, the poem had ‘the land where they grow mate’ (a South American herb tea), to rhyme with ‘sailors fate’. Other versions of the song were collected by James Madison Carpenter in Dundee in 1928/29 from Mr George Simpson, who sailed in the 1890s. Collectors Hugill and Doerflinger have different versions.

I’ve traded with the Yankees, Brazilians and Chinese
I’ve courted Maori beauties, sailed the seven seas
I’ve travelled along with a laugh and a song
In the land where they call you mate
Around the Horn and back again, that’s the sailor’s fate

Across the line, the Gulf Stream,
I’ve been in Table Bay
Around the Horn and back again
That’s the sailor’s way

I’ve run aground in many a sound without a pilot on board
Long boats lowered by lantern light, slipped off and gently oared
With its rowlocks creaking and a rolling swell
And a wind that’d make you ache
Oh, who would sail the seven seas and share a sailor’s fate?

I’ve hauled away to northward, I’ve beat away to east
Trimmed our sails in the teeth of a gale, stood in the calmest seas
We have set our course by a southern star
From Stewart through the straits
Westward round by Milford sound, for that’s the sailor’s fate