I emailed David Drake ( the author of the song) for you and he provided the lyrics and this little story about how he came to write it - he asked me to share it with you ....

The back-story of the song, if you're interested, is that I was at the helm of the HMS Bounty (the ship in the Marlon Brando version of "Mutiny on the Bounty") traveling through the Straits of Mackinac about 4am in the fog. We picked up a large carrier coming toward us on radar and hailed them on the radio. We talked back and forth in the dark ( he didn't realize we were a replica of a 200 year old tall ship) till we made visual contact, at which point he yelled "What the F**k is that?" as we rolled out of a fog-bank.

It got me to thinking about ghost ships and I wrote the song, using the most famous of Ghost Ships, the Flying Dutchman.   That was on September 6, 1989. It's ironic that some 20 years later the next generation knows the story of The Flying Dutchman because of the Pirates of the Carribean movies, but the song WAY predates that.

This is one of the best songs for some time - thanks to Paddy's Passon for introducing me to it

Jan