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Ship Repairing Men

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.
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    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

Harry came to Australia from Scotland around 1952. He was a ship's 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.

lyrics

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.

Chorus:
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.

credits

from Crossing the Line, released July 9, 2021
Harry Robertson 1995

license

all rights reserved

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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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