An
epitaph for all sailors who fell and drowned while
reefing the sails in the stormy Southern Ocean.
From 1790 onward, English sailing ships came to
New Zealand for kauri, whale oil, and later, for
gold. They traveled right around the world, pushed
by the 'Roaring Forties' and sub-antarctic
"Furious Fifties."
Reefing the topsail rounding
Cape Horn
1. 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.
Instead of the stone and
the carven verse
This is his epitaph curt and terse
John Smith A.B.
Drowned in latitude fifty-three
A heavy gale . . .
And a fo - llowing sea . . .
2. A name is missed when the roll they call,
A hand the less for the mainsail haul.
They steal his rags and his bag and bed,
Little it matters to him who’s dead.
Instead of the stone and
the carven verse
This is his epitaph curt and terse
John Smith A.B.
Drowned in latitude fifty-three
A heavy gale . . .
And a fo - llowing sea .
. .
3. We've lost the way to the open sea,
We’ve missed the doom we hoped to dree.*
For the big ships runnin’ their eastin’ down
Are far from the din of Sydney town.
Instead of the stone and
the carven verse
This is his epitaph curt and terse
John Smith A.B.
Drowned in latitude fifty-three
A heavy gale . . .
And a fo - llowing sea
. . .
*
dree = endure
D. H. Hunter
David Hunter Rogers was born in Edinburgh in
1865. He came to Dunedin in 1870 when his
parents migrated from Scotland by a memorable
voyage on a windjammer, and from the ages of 15
to 35 he gained considerable experience in the
mercantile marine, but working on shore, as an
accountant for the Union Steam Ship Company! As
a young man he would have undoubtedly been been
told many stories by the old windjammer sailors,
and these influenced him greatly in later life.
He joined a shipping company because he loved
the speedy windjammers, but 1870-1900 was a time
of rapid change when wooden ships with sails and
small auxiliary steam engines gave way to to
more efficient steel tramp steamers, and as a
shipping company's accountant, he had to sit at
board meetings and present figures showing why
sailing ships could no longer be used.
In 1894 he married Eliza Jane Nimmo, a school
teacher aged 29, and they had 2 children. Later
he was an accountant/secretary for various Otago
companies, and as the aches and pains of an
ageing body in a cold, damp came to him, the
verses (such as Homeward
Bound, Chanties,
Seafarers, Hulks,
and Seabirds)
mostly published in The
Bulletin under the pseudonym of Taiwa
('potato' in dialect Maori) show a
romantic yen for the life of those windjammer
sailors:- of high adventure on a story ocean,
and a sudden painless death in the prime of
life.
He became ill at the age of 60, resigned
his secretaryships of the St John's Ambulance,
Navy League, DIC, etc, made a visit to London
with his wife and daughter, and in 1933 he died
at his hilltop home 12 Pacific St, Dunedin, aged
68. His wife died in 1946.
His original poem, published in the Sydney
Bulletin in August 1904, finishes with...
"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,
Once more
at sea,
Reefing topsails in 53"
More Sailing Ship Verse by DH Rogers
The Girls Have Got The Tow Rope
(Homeward Bound)
By D. H. Rogers (1905)
They will take us from the moorings,
they will tow us down the bay,
They will pluck us up to windward when we sail.
We shall hear the keen wind whistle,
we shall feel the sting of spray
When we've dropped the deep sea pilot o'er the
rail.
Then
it's "Johnny, heave and start 'er!"
and it's "Johnny, roll and go!" When
the mates have picked the watches
there is little rest for Jack. But
we'll raise the good old chantey
that the homeward bounders know, For
the girls have got the tow rope
an' they're hauling in the slack.
In the dusty streets and dismal,
through the noises of the town
We can hear the west wind humming through the
shrouds.
We can see the lightning leaping
as the tropic suns go down,
And the dapple of the shadows of the clouds.
And
the salt blood dances in us,
to the tune of Homeward Bound, To
the call to weary watches,
to the sheet and to the tack. When
they bid us man the capstan
how the hands will walk her 'round For
the girls have got the tow rope
and they're hauling in the slack.
Through the sunshine of the tropics,
'round the bleak and dreary Horn
Half across this windy planet lies our way.
We will leave the land behind us
like a welcome that's outworn
When we see the reeling mastheads swing and
sway.
Through
the weather fair and stormy,
in the calm and in the gale, We
will heave and haul to help her,
we will keep her on her track. And
you'll hear the chorus rolling
as the hands are making sail, For
the girls have got the tow rope
and they're hauling in the slack.
This tune by
Gordon Bok is not the original lively tune
written by Alice Forrester in 1913.
Shanties
The runner from the boarding house has thrown
me on the ship,
I'd pawn my soul for liquor, but can't get a
single drop,
Then they boot us from the fo’castle — trampin’
round and round we go,
Heavin’ up the bloomin’ anchor to a chanty sad
and slow. ’Way down
Rio! ’Way down Rio! Fare
ye well, my bonnie young girl— We’re
bound for the Rio Grande !
A month at sea is over, and I’ve started earning
pay—
We've worked out our advance-notes, and the
crowd is feelin’ gay—
So the dead horse will be hoisted to the loo’ard
mainyard arm
(It’s a sort o’ stuffed resemblance of the sort
that’s on a farm);
An’ first we drag it round the decks—it’s just a
shellback’s play—
And we sing the dead-horse chorus loud before we
hoist away. Old
man, old man! your horse is dead. And
they say so. And they hope so. Old
man, old man! your horse is dead. Ah!
poor old man."
She’s divin’ through the rollers,
threshin’ round the bitter Horn,
An' I'm cursin' frozen canvas, wonderin' why I's
ever born,
For m'hands have lost their feeling, and m'toes
begin to freeze,
And the hail is raising blisters through
m'slop-chest dungarees,
And the foot-ropes slip from under , and the
lines refuse to coil,
Oh, it’s gaudy reefin’ tops’ls to the tune of “
Paddy Doyle.” Oh,
we’ll heave aye, and we’ll haul aye, An’
we’ll pay Paddy Doyle for his boots.
Now the voyage is nearly over, and her nose is
pointed back,
For the girls have got the tow-rope an’ they’re
hauling in the slack,
There is little time for sleeping, there is
little watch below,
For the westerlies are hummin’, and this barky
has to go;
There is many a mile to travel to the docks at
London town,
So its “Set the main to’ gallant,” and we strike
up “Sally Brown.” I love
a maid across the water, Oh,
ho, roll and go, She’s
Sally herself and Sally’s daughter, And I
spent my money on Sally Brown.
We’re twistin’ up the river— at last we are in
tow,
We have trimmed the yards all shipshape, and the
kites their harbor stow,
And I'm packin’ up me oilskins, an’
m'hook-pot, and m'bed,
And I'm wonderin’ how I’ll like it, with a roof
above m'head,
Always thinkin’ of the pay day, when the girls
come flockin’ roun’,
And I catch m'self a hummin’ the song of “Blow
Him Down.” As I
was a walkin’ down Paradise-street, Hey,
ho, blow the man down ! A
pretty young lass I chanced to meet, Oh,
give us some time to blow the man down !
Seafarers They shanghaied us in Frisco,
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 tropics,
When the pitch boiled up on deck.
We have saved our hides,
and little besides,
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 a Yankee barque,
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 leads man called,
The depth 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 Sue and Sally,"
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.
They have heard the ring of laughter,
They have carried freights of tears,
They have faced the great green rollers,
tipped with snow;
They have traversed all the oceans,
They have tarried at the piers,
They have come to rest at last in Rotten Row.
They have lost their sweeping pinions,
They are shorn of mast and spar.
Not a footstep stirs the echoes down below.
And the booming of the breakers,
On the far off harbour bar,
Cannot wake them as they sleep in Rotten Row.
They swing slowly round the compass,
Day by day, and year by year,
As they turn to stem the soft tide’s ebb and
flow.
And the lowly seabirds calling
Is the only sound they hear,
And the lapping of the waves in Rotten Row.
The stormy hearts that manned them,
And the gentle hearts that banned them,
They are done with ban, or blessing, long ago.
And none are left to love them,
Save the wandering clouds above them,
And the grey gulls flying seaward o’er the
Row.
TAIWA. (1904)
We are the ghosts of the men unburied
We are the wraiths of the seamen drowned
Haunting the ranks of the rollers serried
Breasting the strength of the gales unbound
Ghosts of the men who died grimly, grimly
While shrill winds wailed and the sun shone
dimly
With the clouds above an’the sea around.
Winging aye on a quest that’s bootless
Day by day, to windward and lee
We hover over the sea plain fruitless
With the homeless clouds for company
Ever and aye we are flying, flying
The seamen know when they hear us crying
The hail of the men who were lost at sea.
There is no rest from the west wind’s urging
’Twixt the blue sea floor and the blue sky’s
dome
We find no peace from the combers, surging
The flying drift and the frothing foam.
With wistful hearts we are waiting, waiting
For skies dissolving and seas abating
And the hour to come that shall call us home
This is the legend I heard them tell
One windy watch on the Fairy Bell
As the red sun sank o’er the ocean’s lip
And the seabirds wheeled round the driving ship
TAIWA. (1905)
A Fancy
Tucked away ’neath a quilt of clover,
My sleep shall be sound enough, no doubt.
Still, when a hundred years are over,
The time may come for a look about.
A curious ghost may venture out
When wild birds sing and wild bees hum,
And lift its head from the grave’s redoubt
For just a peep at the days to come.
Just a glance at the creepers trailing,
To hear one bar of the breaker’s song,
One more glimpse of the white clouds sailing
Over the beach where the grey gulls throng;
Where the keen air bites like a lash’s thong.
And the sea-caves boom as the waves succumb.
Is the wishing weak? Is the hoping wrong ?
For just a peep at the days to come ? .....
TAIWA (1905)
Inland
At the turn of the track the path emerges
To the bare, bleak hill, from the dense,
dark trees,
You can hear the echoes of distant surges,
You can catch a glimpse of the open seas,
A patch of blue on the far horizon—
A touch of color beyond the gray.
It is good to pause and rest the eyes on
The clean, salt sea that is miles away.
It is good to recall the days of roaming—
The gleaming sands in the Eastern bights—
The sparkle of waves from the forefoot
foaming,
And the welcome warnings of beacon lights.
The lofty spars and the taut shrouds wailing
Like harp-strings stirred by the steady
Trades.
I have left the land and gone a-sailing
In a Ship of Dreams that is manned by
Shades.
I can see the curve of the canvas swelling,
Like a captive cloud, ere they sheet it
home.
I can feel the shock of the bows repelling
All the serried onslaughts of waves that
comb.
I see the flashing of sprays that board her,
And hear the song of the tropic breeze,
The whispered word or the shouted order,
The crash and thunder of topping seas.
But the track winds round, and away from
seaward—
Away from the dreams that it brought by
chance,
And our thoughts drift down with the wind to
leeward.
As we turn away from the old romance.
The last low notes of the breakers’ chorus
Die, like the days that are dead for me,
We set our eyes to the land before us —
We bid good-bye to the distant sea.
