KARL EDSTROM AND THE HESPER
(Lois Lyman)

My name is Karl Edstrom, I am eighty years old,
And I heard that you're trying to save the Hesper.
I joined her crew in 'twenty one — for Le Havre we were bound —
I was twenty then, and I never will forget her.

She was cloud-white and long, and her four masts so lofty
That her topsails seemed to pierce the sky above her.
She was strong and deep and wide, timberports on either side;
When I looked at her, I thought that she was lovely.

We sailed out of Rockland with a crew of nine men
And her hold was just as full as we could pack her.
She was loaded down and slow with logwood and coal
And her bottom was so foul we could not tack her.

Caleb Haskell was master and the mate was his son
And a tougher bastard never sailed blue-water
For no matter what we tried he would not be satisfied,
And he drove us all the time we were aboard her.

When we landed in France the dockside was swarming
With peddlars and ladies so charming.
"Where are the men?" the ladies cried: they could not believe their eyes
That only nine of us had brought her to this landing.

The cook got so drunk that we all ate on shore
And I thought the Old Man would hire another,
But the captain said: "Let him be, for he's sober out to sea,
And he makes a better pie than my mother."

Rolling out to Venezuela we sang and made music,
Played cribbage, killed rats and stood our watches.
We arrived on Christmas day, over New Year's we lay,
Loading goat manure until it reached the hatches.

In Charleston, Carolina, they paid off my time
I said goodbye to my mates and there I left her.
It's been fifty years for me since I made a life at sea;
Now and then I think of Haskell and the Hesper.

So here's my ten dollars to help you restore her
For it makes me sad that ships like her are gone, now.
But it grieves me even more to see her rotting on the shore
Who rode the waves like a snowy gull in summer.



Copyright 1988, Lois Lyman



From the Gordon Bok CD, Schooners.



Bok says:

A few years ago the friends of the Wiscasset Schooners were trying to raise funds to "stabilize" them. They received a letter from Karl, who had sailed in Hesper when they were both young. Someone went to the nursing home to tape his recollections of those days. It was from this story that Lois made the song, and put it to the tune The Swarthfell Rocks.