These lyrics are from the Website of William Pint and Felicia Dale. THE MARY STANFORD OF RYE (Allen Maslen) When master John Stanford of London town died They read out his will and his legacy spied It said take this bequest for to build me a craft So that with it my name shouldn't die And give it to the R.N.L.I. So they fashioned a lifeboat of Liverpool class 38 feet from the stem to the aft With a close reefed mainsail on a 20 foot mast And to grant the last wish of his life Named it Mary after his wife She went into service in 1916 And 63 times from the boathouse she screamed Cross the shale of Rye Bay Through the teeth of the storm And into the mouth of the waves All sailors' lives there to save CHORUS Johnny come home they all sing from the pier On the 15th day of November each year And one day the sea she will give up her dead And home will come young Johnny Head Home will come young Johnny Head Young Johnny Head Had just turned seventeen And to serve on the lifeboat was Young Johnny's dream His father was the coxswain His brother in the crew And to serve he was willing to die On the Mary Stanford of Rye On November 15th With the storm at its height The Alice of Riga was losing her fight Seven miles from Dungeness She was drifting and lost And the crew prayed and cried To the moon That's when they heard the maroon It was four in the morning When young Johnny Head On hearing the signal He leapt from his bed With his father and brother They ran like the wind That whipped up the furious waves But there were lives to be saved To haul out the lifeboat Took blood, sweat and tears It took them two hours Must have seemed like two years Exhausted and spent, they set her afloat And into the barbarous waves Rowed Mary to Alice's aid It was 6:45 when the shoremen lost sight of the Mary as she pitched out into the night And at 6:51 the coastguard he rang, Saying "Stand down your lifeboatmen brave For the Alice is already saved." Nobody knows from that day to this, Why the coastguard got word At eleven past six But the message he kept forty minutes or more While seventeen brave men of Rye Rowed into the tempest to die It was almost noon on the terrible morn And the families and launch crew had waited since dawn When suddenly somebody pointed and cried And there in the surf and the spray The Mary Stanford she lay Her body was battered Her keel was upright No close-reefed mainsail No crewman in sight They hauled her ashore And they knelt round and prayed Then gazed out again at the main And the tears they ran like the rain Then one by one The sea gave up her dead First Willie Clark then young Jimmy Head Then Albert and Rob, the two Cutting boys And three from the Pope family And nine more sons of the sea But young Johnny Head He never came home He lies out somewhere in the ocean alone His comrades lie buried In the churchyard at Rye And they keep him a space for his bed Once day they'll find Johnny Head So the next time you sail Around Hastings and Rye Look to the distance and keep out an eye And if you see a young man from the R.N.L.I. Standing guard over the foam You'll know that Johnny's come home recording by Meet on the Ledge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5PiW3fn6uQ
|