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Across the Line (The Sailor's Way)

from Crossing the Line by Forty Degrees South

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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Songs of the southern oceans - 22 tracks

    Comes in cardboard sleeve with printed 8 page booklet

    Shipping outside Australia takes 2-3 weeks using standard postage. Contact us for any queries.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Crossing the Line via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 7 days

      $20 AUD or more 

     

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    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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  • Buy the Full Digital Album

  • Full Digital Discography

    Get all 4 Forty Degrees South releases available on Bandcamp and save 15%.

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Crossing the Line, Life Of Brine, Shore Leave, and Hazard, Hardship And Damned Little Pay. , and , .

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about

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.

lyrics

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

Chorus:
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

credits

from Crossing the Line, released July 9, 2021
Trad. c.1890s

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Forty Degrees South Sydney, Australia

A Sydney folk group known from 1988 for their powerful impact when singing unaccompanied traditional songs.

Strong individual singers, the interplay of their combined voices makes for a distinctive sound.

Sea shanties and other songs of maritime and industrial history and union songs feature large in their repertoire, songs with a robust quality that tell of real people, their lives and work. ... more

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