I never met Des Newton but perhaps this poem by C. Fox Smith that I've adapted for singing would be appropriate for a memorial service (copy and paste into WORD/TIMES/12 to line up chords):

By Cicely Fox Smith, from SHIP MODELS by Cicely Fox Smith,
published by Conway Maritime Press in 1972. p. 87
from an original Country Life publication of 1951;
First appeared in PUNCH,1920, p. 230
Adapted by Charlie Ipcar 8/2/07
Tune: after Old Orange Flute


A Ship in a Bottle


C-------------------------------------G------------C
In a sailormen's restaurant down Rotherhithe way,
-------------------------Am--------------G------------G7
Where the din of the docksides rings loud all the day,
--F----------------C-----------F--------------C
A-mong the stale odours of hot food and cold,
------------------------------G-------------C
In a fly-spotted window I there did be-hold –
---------------------------F
A ship in a bottle some sailor had made
------C------------------------------G----------------G7
In his watches be-low, swinging South with the Trade,
-----------F-------------------C-------------F----------C
While his messmates were mendin' old dungaree suits,
-----------------Am----------G----------C
Or patchin' up oilskins and leaky sea-boots.


Chorus:

C---------------------F
A ship in a bottle a-sailing away,
---C-------------------------------G-------------G7
In flying-fish weather through rainbows of spray,
------F----------C------------F-------------C
Over oceans of wonder, by headlands a-gleam,
----------------------Am------------G----------C
To the harbours of youth, on the wind of a dream!


That tiny full-rigger predestined to ride
To its cable of thread on a green-painted tide –
In its wine-bottle world while the new world rolled on,
Tho' the sailor who made it was long ago gone;
His fingers all roughened, toughened and scarred,
With hauling and hoisting, so calloused and hard;
So crooked and stiff you might wonder that still
They could fashion that ship with such cunning and skill. (CHO)

In fancy I saw him all weathered and browned,
Deep crows'-feet and wrinkles his eyelids around,
The hairy forearm with its gaudy tattoo
Of a bold-looking female in scarlet and blue;
In fancy I listened, in fancy could hear
The thrum of the shrouds and the creak of the gear;
Then I thought of my youth with its pleasure and pain,
And the shipmate I loved was beside me again – (CHO)

Charley Noble