The Ghostly Sailors

I hope you'll lend anear
A man and boy togather
Well on for fifty year
That I have sailed upon the ocean
In sumer pleasant days
And through the stormy winters
When the stormy winds do rage

I have tossed about on georges
Bin a fishing in the bay
Flown south in early seasons
Most aney where it would pay
I have bin in different seasons
To western banks and grand
Have bin in herring vessels
That went to Newfoundland

There I saw storms I tell you
When times looked very blue
But some way Ive bin lucky
Bin lucky and got through
I aint a brag however
I wont say much but then
I aint no easier frightened
Then the most of other men

Twas one night as we were sailing
We were off shore aways
I never shall forget it
In all my mortle days
It was in the grim dark watches
I felt a chilling dread
Come over me as if I heared one

Calling from the dead
Right too the rail they clymed
All silent on by one
A dozen ripping sailors
Just wate untill I am done
Their faces pail and sea wet
Shone ghostly through the night
Each fellow took his station
Just as if he had a right

They moved around among us
Untill land was just in sight
Or rather I should say so
The light house shoud its light
And then those ghostly sailors
Moved to the rail again
And vanished like the myseit
Before the brake of em

We sailed right in to harbor
And every mothers son
Will tell you the same story
The same as I have done
The trip before the other
We were on georges then
Ran down another vessel
And sank her and her men

Those where the same poor fellows
I hope god rest their souls
That our old craft ran under
That time on georges shoules
So now you have heared my story
It is just as I say
I do believe in spirrits
Since that time aney way

(no tune)
from Fenwick Hatt's notebook [spelling and punctuation as printed]
Sea Songs and Ballads from Nineteenth Century Nova Scotia: The William H. Smith and Fenwick Hatt Manuscripts (edited by Edith Fowke, Folklorica Press, 1981)

NOTES:
This is an unusual Canadian ballad that is very well known along the east coast. It was inspired by a real sea tragedy which is linked with a sailors' legend, and is one of the very few native North American ballads that has a supernatural theme.
Doerflinger was the first to note that the original words of "The Ghostly Crew" by Harry L. Marcy appeared in 1874 in Fishermen's Ballads and Songs of the Sea compiled by Procter Bros., a stationery firm in Gloucester, Massachusetts. It soon acquired a tune and, according to Doerflinger, "was a favorite of fishermen from Cape Ann to Cape Race." However, all reported versions are from Canada. Doerflinger gives two Nova Scotia versions; Creighton found it in both Nova Scotia and New Brunswick; Ives found it in Prince Edward Island; Horace Beck, Greenleaf, Leach, and Peacock all found it in Newfoundland; and Leach adds another version from Labrador. Most of these texts have the full eight stanzas; a few have lost stanza 7, and Leach's Labrador text reduces the story to three and a half stanzas.
In Bluenose Ghosts, Helen Creighton gives an account of the tragedy that inspired the ballad as it was described in the Boston Globe: The Charles Haskell from Boston was anchored on Georges Bank on March 7, 1866, when another ship got adrift and was being hurled directly towards the Haskell. To save themselves the crew cut the Haskell's rope, and then she was driven upon another ship, the Andrew Jackson of Salem, and cut it in two. It sank with all hands.
The next time the Charles Haskell returned to the same fishing grounds the crew testified that sailors of the Andrew Jackson came up over the sides in their oilskins and manned the Haskell. After that the Haskell became known as the ghost vessel and the owners could not get a crew. She was sold to Captain David Hayden of Port Wade, Nova Scotia, and used for transporting wood along the coast. Dr. Creighton concludes: "I have talked to men who had heard the story personally from the crew, and I too heard it confirmed from one who saw it happen, Captain Ammon Zinck of Lunenburg."
Elisabeth Greenleaf heard a somewhat different account from James Gillespie of Fortune Harbour who said he had seen the ship that the ghostly seamen boarded: "They hove the sails off her and let her rot at the wharf in St. John's harbour because they could never get a crew to sign on her, after the trip when the spirits was seen."
Thomas Raddall adds this note: "W.H. Smith told me (April 1940) he well remembered 'The Ghostly Sailors' being sung aboard Nova Scotia vessels in which he sailed. He could not remember the schooner's name, but she was a Gloucester vessel. She ran down another vessel on George's Bank and sank her with all hands. The story was that as she was returning from George's Bank on her next trip she was boarded in the night by the ghosts of the drowned men, who left her as Thatcher's Island light came in sight. The crew left the schooner as soon as she got home and the owners could never get anybody to go fishing in her; ultimately she was sold as a coaster."
Elisabeth Greenleaf compares the ballad to Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner." She quotes Wordsworth's account of the planning of "The Ancient Mariner" in which he says that he suggested "the navigation of the ship by the dead men," and thinks he may have known of a tradition or folk song with that motif. She notes that many Newfoundland ballads describe life while fishing on the Banks, but while there are some light-hearted ones about voyages to the Grand Banks or American Banks, George's Bank seemed to have a sinister reputation: every song she heard about it was a sea tragedy.
Many sailors firmly believe the tale of the ghostly fishermen. As Leach notes, it is based on the old sea superstition that the spirit of a man lost from a vessel will board that vessel when it appears again at the spot where the tragedy occurred. Sailors tell a similar story of the 1914 sealing disaster when the Newfoundland lost seventy-seven men out of a crew of two hundred. On the record Songs from the Outports of Newfoundland, Pat Maher of Pouch Cove tells how he sailed on the Newfoundland when it had been renamed the Blanford, and on the anniversary of the tragedy sailors swore that they saw ghostly figures walk up the side of the ship and into the boat. He concludes: "I think that brings the tradition true that men do come home."
References: Laws NAB, DiG, 168 (Beck, 204; Creighton SBNS, 254; Doerflinger, 181; Greenleaf, 227). Creighton FSNB, 223; Bluenose Ghosts, 127; Ives, 25; Leach, 244; Peacock, 873. Old Favourites, 18/10/22 plus 3 repeats.
Folkways 4075 (Morris Houlihan, Pat Maher).
National Museum: CR-B-22.215; CR-B-99.1007; CR-B-153.1882; CR-B-193.2211; CR-I B1; PEA-B-75.673.