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At Sea (John Smith AB)

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

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about

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.

lyrics

When the southern gale is blowing hard,
And the watch are all on the topsail yard.
When five come down where six went up,
There’s one less to share the bite and sup.

Chorus:
Instead of the stone and carven verse,
This is his epitaph, curt and terse:
“John Smith, A. B.,
Drowned in latitude fifty-three,
A heavy gale and a following sea.”

A name is missed when the roll they call.
A hand the less for the mainsail haul.
They steal his rags and they dump his bed,
Little it matters to him who’s dead.

We lost the way to the open sea,
We have missed the doom we thought to dree.
For the big ships running their eastings down
Are far from the din of Sydney town.

Instead of the clean blue sunlit wave,
Our bones will lie in a darksome grave.
For the means to live we barter life.
Would I were back in the old-time strife.

Final Chorus:
For the means to live we barter life.
Would I were back in the old-time strife.
Once more at sea,
Reefing topsails in fifty-three,
In the blinding drift from the angry sea.

credits

from Crossing the Line, released July 9, 2021
D.H. Rogers 1904,
Tune N. Colquhoun.

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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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