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Contributed by Fred Gosbee 2007-02-09

Bath — I thought you'd like to know about this song. I wrote it when I worked at Bath Iron Works.

You may listen to here http://cdbaby.com/cd/gosbee1

click on Shanteyman's Hail.

We have lots of other songs about the Maine coast, and are writing a song for the Virginia

Our website is at www.castlebay.net

All the best- Fred Gosbee

Shanteyman's Hail ©1984 Fred Gosbee

Hey, Ho! Roll and go!

Round Cape Horn to San Francisco

Shanteyman sing, boys, pull on the line

And we're back in record time

At Bath down in Maine they built many tall ships

They were faired up and planked, then launched down the slips

The strength of our nation was built on the pine

Of the mast-trees that harnessed the wind

There were schooners and sloops and all kinds of small craft

Warships with cannon both foreward and aft

And the queens of the seas, Downeasters and clippers

Mighty proud men were their skippers

Then the steam-powered ships came along

Their engines replaced the shanteyman's song

And men in the hellish heat down in the hold

Spent their watches shoveling coal

First coal, then oil, then nuclear heat

Replaced all the wind-driven ships in the fleet

And skills handed down for hundreds of years

Have all but disappeared

And where went the tall ships that once sailed so free

Under clouds of white canvas across the salt sea

With the wind in their rigging and foam at the bow

Tell me, where are they now?

Well some were scrapped and some can be found

Like the Luther and the Hesper, up the Sheepscot aground

Some were towed out to deep water and sunk

Regarded as no more than junk

Well we can't live forever on fuel from the ground

The prices go up and no more will be found

If we're still around for the next age of sail

We might hear that shanteyman hail