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