Here's a transcription with just the lyrics:

Thread #50319   Message #763869
Posted By: radriano
12-Aug-02 - 12:04 PM
Thread Name: A bone in her mouth - meaning?
Subject: Lyr Add: TOW-ROPE GIRLS and PICTURES (C. Fox-Smith

Jerry, thanks for starting this thread!

I've been trying to reach Dave Webber to find out his source for the explanation of "bone in her mouth" that he gave me. In the meantime it's pretty clear that the accepted meaning of the phrase describes a ship going at speed.

The C.Fox Smith poem Jerry referred to is probably The Tow-Rope Girls. See text below. I also found two other Smith poems mentioning the phrase in her book, Sea Songs and Ballads, 1917-1922.

THE TOW-ROPE GIRLS
Oh, a ship in the Tropics a-foaming along,
With every stitch drawing, the Trade blowing strong,
The white caps around her all breaking in spray,
For the girls have got hold of her tow-rope to-day.

(An' it's "Haul away, girls, steady an' true,
Polly an' Dolly an' Sally an' Sue, -
Mothers an' sisters an' sweethearts an' all,
Haul away ... all the way ... haul away, haul!")

She's logging sixteen as she speeds from the South,
The wind in her royals, a bone in her mouth,
With a wake like a mill-race she rolls on her way,
For the girls have got hold of her tow-rope to-day.

The old man he stood on the poop at high noon;
He paced fore and aft and he whistled a tune,
Then put by his sextant and thus he did say:
"The girls have got hold of our tow-rope to-day.

"Of cargoes and charters we've had our full share,
Of grain and of lumber enough and to spare,
Of nitrates and Taltal and rice for Bombay,
And the girls have got hold of our tow-rope to-day.

"She has dipped her yards under, hove to off the Horn,
In the fog and the floes she has drifted forlorn,
Becalmed in the Doldrums a week long she lay,
But the girls have got hold of her tow-rope to-day."

Oh, hear the good Trade wind a-singing aloud,
A homeward bound shanty in sheet and in shroud,
Oh, hear how he whistles in halliard and stay:
"The girls have got hold of the tow-rope to-day!"

And it's oh! for the chops of the Channel at last,
The cheer that goes up when the tug-hawser's passed -
The mate's "That'll do" - and a fourteen months' pay -
For the girls have got hold of the tow-rope to-day...

("Then haul away, girls, steady and true,
Polly an' Dolly an' Sally an' Sue, -
Mothers an' sisters an' sweethearts an' all,
Haul away ... all the way ... haul away, haul!")