Seaferers

SEAFERERS
2501

Shanghaied in San Francisco,
And we fetched up in Bombay
They set us afloat on an old Leith boat,
That steered like a stack o’ hay
We panted in the tropies,
When the pitch boiled up on deck
We have saved our hides, and little be- sides,
From an ice-cold, North Sea wreck

We have drunk our rum in Portland,
We have threshed up Behring Strait
We have toed the mark on barque, a Yankee
With a hard-case Down-East mate
We know the streets of Santos,
The loom of the lone Azores;
And we found our grub in a salt horse tub
Condemned from the Navy stores

We know the track to Auckland,
And the light on Sydney Head,
We have crept close-hauled, while the leadsman called,
The depths of the Channel’s bed
We know the quays of Glasgow,
And the river at Saigon,
And have drunk our glass with a Chinese lass
In a house-boat at Canton
They pay us off in London
It’s oh, for a spell ashore),
And again we ship for the Southern trip,
In a week or hardly more
It’s “Good-bye Sally and Sue,”
For it’s time to get afloat,
With an aching head and a straw-stuffed bed,
A knife, and an oilskin coat

Sing, “Time to leave her, Johnnie,”
Sing “Bound for the Rio Grande,”
When the tug turns back, we follow her track,
For a long last look at land
Then the purple disappears,
And only the blue is seen,
That will send our bones down to Davy, Jones,
And our souls to Fiddlers’ Green
-Taiwa in Nomad’s