HERZOGIN CECILIE (source)

The Loss of the Famous Windjammer Herzogin Cecilie in 1936 / A ballad by Ken Stephens

HERZOGIN CECILIE
(Ken Stephens)

Sounding down the Baltic where the wreck-mark buoys all peal
She's the mighty, full-rigged ship, Herzogin Cecilie
Gusting down the Channel, where the steamers never yield

She's the mighty, full-rigged ship, Herzogin Cecilie
Herzogin Cecilie, Herzogin Cecilie
She's the mighty, full-rigged ship
Herzogin Cecilie

Leaning down through Biscay, where no watches get no meals
Dawdling through the Doldrums, though the slightest breeze she feels

Roaring through the Forties with her yards stretched up like steel
Tacking in the Tasman Sea where the squalls upon her steal

Running, easting for the Horn where the giant sperm-whales squeal
Gale-bound off the Falklands where the Albatrosses wheel

Shipboard straining in her hull as the hurricane she feels
Falmouth bound for orders where her passage time's revealed

Run upon the Bolt Tail in a mist to test her steel
Hard ashore in Soar Mill Cove on the rocks that broke her keel
She was the mighty, full-rigged ship, Herzogin Cecilie

Written by Ken Stephens of Southampton in 1981 and published in ‘Songs of the South Devon Coast’ by Rumpus, Dartington Hall Studio, 1986

*The four-masted barque Herzogin Cecilie stranded off Soar Mill Cove on 25 April 1936 shortly after she had won the Australian Grain Race from Port Lincoln to Falmout