# Poem or Shanty



## Michael Taylor (Aug 31, 2008)

Need help once again....I remember being told a rhyming song list by one of our Quartermasters with Ellermans that gave all the names of lights from Ushant around to Gib. Does anybody remember this one.
I need it for a sea shanty group here in New Bedford Massachusetts.


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## Barrie Youde (May 29, 2006)

Spanish Ladies?

The words of this well-known shanty are readily available on Google - although they don't exactly fit your requirement of every headland from Ushant to Gibraltar.


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## Laurie Ridyard (Apr 16, 2014)

If you are looking for sea shanties, try to find an LP called " Bawdy Sea Shanties " by Oscar Brand.

Here is an example....


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## Robert Hilton (Feb 13, 2011)

Not exactly a shanty. There was a popular version of "Bell Bottom Trousers" on BBC Radio in the 40's, but I prefer "Home, Boys, Home" which is probably a genuine forebitter. 

As for pilotage rhymes I would gladly learn the one from Ushant to Gib, but never heard of it before. There's a quite saucy song from the Thames sailormen that takes us from Orfordness to the Thames, but my knowledge of it is imperfect. It ends with, "We was comin' in the lock of the K.G. dock when the skipper caught his c*ck in the mainsheet block. I assume you are looking for something to perform in public. Forebitters should go well. Shanties should never be sung chorally. Some few choirs come close to shanty singing. 

There are, or were, a few versions of:

First the Dudgeon, then the Spurn.
Flamborough Head next comes on turn.
Scarborough Castle stands on high,
Whitby rocks lie Northerly.
Sunderland lays in a bight,
Canny old Shields afore dark that night. 

Some versions give a distance in nautical miles to Sunderland from Whitby High Light. I still hear it in a Geordie accent.


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## Michael Taylor (Aug 31, 2008)

As always thanks all for your help....looks like my search may just have joined the lost archives.


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## Farmer John (Feb 22, 2012)

For a trip round the country, you can't beat the Shipping Forecast, I can lie there in the dark with the radio on and follow round the coast with pictures in my mind for most places.


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## Duncan112 (Dec 28, 2006)

Stan Hughill's "Shanties from the Seven Seas" may have something in


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## Laurie Ridyard (Apr 16, 2014)




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## John Rogers (May 11, 2004)

Michael Taylor said:


> As always thanks all for your help....looks like my search may just have joined the lost archives.


Maybe not, an old shipmate of mine who crossed the bar last year wrote 
many Sea Poems and Shanty's his name was Reg Kear from Bristol, he was a member of SN and posted a couple of his poems on the site.
He also published a book called "AROUND THE BUOY" it contains 25 sea poems and one is called Sea Shanty and that may be the one you are looking for. The book was being sold by the Bristol Branch of the Merchant Navy with proceeds going into the general fund.
I have the book and it has some great poems.
Try contacting the Bristol Branch and see if they still sell them.

Regards,
John.


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## slick (Mar 31, 2006)

All,
My father was the Keeper of the Eddystone light,
he married a mermaid one fine night,
The result of this union was us three a whale a porpoise,
and the last was me......
and so on learned in my youth and now forgotten in my dotage.


Yours aye,

slick


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## Ron Stringer (Mar 15, 2005)

slick said:


> The result of this union was us three a *whale *a porpoise,
> and the last was me......
> and so on learned in my youth and now forgotten in my dotage.
> 
> ...


It was a turtle, not a whale, when I learned it. However other sources give it as a porgy (a fish) and that is how I remember it being sung by The Brothers Four on a record played at every session in the 3rd Engineer's cabin.


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