Lyr Req: Seafaring ghost songs

Subject: Lyr Add: THE GLENALOON; OR, THE SKIPPER'S YARN
From: GUEST,Julia L
Date: 22 Oct 23 - 11:15 PM

How about some good creepy seafaring ghosts or ghost ships?

here's a good one to start- found in Phillips Barry's collection from Mr. Chas F. Alley, Jonesport, ME 1930 and Sandy Ives got a version with a tune. It's in our book "Songs of Ships & Sailors"


THE GLENALOON; OR, THE SKIPPER'S YARN.
“Founded on fact.”
Francis Alexander Durivage

ONLY a ripple, and just a puff
Stirring the old brown sails,
Like as a breath from a sick man's lips
Flutters a bit, then fails.
After awhile the wind was dead,
And we rolled on the oily sea,
Like a weary man in a fever fit
Moving uneasily.

No headway on the old barky now!
She might have been a log.
Ten leagues away the land lay hid
By a strip of cold, gray fog:
And three points off the starboard bow—
'Twas a summer night in June—
Where the sky and the water joined in one,
Heaved up the red, full moon.

Bloody red, but silver soon,
With a path of glittering light
Stretched from the bark to the ocean's edge,
Waving, and broad, and bright.
Something dark in the shining belt,
About a league away,
A shapeless bulk, like a ragged rock,
On the face of the water lay.

There was no rock or reef on the chart
Laid down as here about;
We looked through the night-glass steadily
But we couldn't make it out.
I kept my eye on the ugly thing
As I stood on the quarter-deck,
Then ordered the crew to lower the gig—
It might be it was a wreck.

We pulled away for the shapeless hulk
Till it loomed against the moon,
And we read on the bow of a mastless brig
The name—the "Glenaloon."
We hailed; tho' never a man was on deck,
And never a voice replied;
We shipped our oars as we touched the wreck,
And climbed the vessel's side.

There was a rubbish of splintered spars—
Mainmast and foremast gone—
Shattered boats on the littered deck,
But of living beings—none!
Surely that is a human form
Crouching upon the deck,
In an old sou' wester and Guernsey frock!
"Shipmate! what of the wreck?"

Surly old chap! I raised his hat—
Remember, the moon was full—
And started back, for its white rays fell
On a ghastly, grinning skull.
Groping our way through spars and sails,
Mottled with shade and light,
Five more skeletons we found
Bleached to a deathly white.

Then walking aft—the deck was flush—
To the cabin I made my way.
Stretched on the transom at full length
The skeleton captain lay.
In his bony hand a paper was clutched
(I read what it said next day),
"Wrecked—boats stove and food all gone—
We can but wait and pray."

As we pulled from the brig o'er the steel-black sea,
In the light of the pitiless moon,
We read again her fateful name—
The weird name—"Glenaloon."
And faster and faster into the waves
The blades of our stout oars fell,
For the deck seemed swarming with shadowy forms
Waving a wild farewell.

In the sunny calm of the following day
We buried the fleshless crew,
Shrouded and shotted, one by one,
They sank through the water's blue
And I never look of a summer night
On the blood-red disk of the moon,
But I think of the horror she once revealed—
The wreck of the "Glenaloon."

[As found in The Glenaloon and Other Poems, by Francis Alexander Durivage (New York: Trow’s Printing and Bookbinding Co., 1881), page 41.]

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Seafaring ghost songs
From: GUEST,Rick Pollay (aka Saul T. Dawg)
Date: 23 Oct 23 - 02:05 PM

A classic from 1874 Newfoundland is Ghostly Fishermen by Harry L. Marcy (1874) aka Ghostly Sailors, Ghostly Crew, Ghost Ship
Many versions in Nova Scotia and NWFLD.

It' not too spooky as the ghosts prove to be helping hands.

You may all smile if you want to, or perhaps you'll lend an ear
To a tale that I will tell you, that goes back nigh forty year
I have sailed across the water, from Western Banks to Grand
on many different vessels that went from Newfoundland

And I've seen storms, I tell you, where things looked rather blue
But I was always lucky, and managed to get through
I cannot brag, however, I'm not saying much, but then
I'm not as easily frightened, as most of other men

The stormy night I speak of, we were off shores quite a ways
I never will forget it, in all my mortal days
When on my dark late-night watch, I felt a chilling dread
Steal over me as if I heard, a calling from the dead

Well, o’er the rail they clambered, all silent one by one
A dozen dripping sailors! (Now, wait till I am done)
Their faces pale and sea-wet, shone ghostly in the night
Each fellow took his station, as if he had the right

And homeward steered the vessel, until land come in sight
Or rather I should say, we saw a lighthouse tower light
And then those ghostly sailors, moved to the rail again
And vanished in the dawn’s grey mist, before the sun’s on them

We sailed into the harbour, and every mother’s son
Will tell you the same story, the same as I have done
These were the very fellows, I hope God rest their souls,
That crewed a ship that sank that year while fishing on the Shoals

And now you've heard my story: it was just as I say
So I believe in spirits until this very day

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Seafaring ghost songs
From: Robert B. Waltz
Date: 23 Oct 23 - 05:07 PM

The Ballad Index has sixteen songs with the keyword combination "ghost" and either "ship" or "sailor" or "navy." In descending order of number of citations:

The Cruel Ship's Carpenter (The Gosport Tragedy; Pretty Polly) [Laws P36A/B]
Lowlands (My Lowlands Away)
The Ghostly Crew [Laws D16]
Nancy of Yarmouth (Jemmy and Nancy; The Barbadoes Lady) [Laws M38]
The Nightingale [Laws M37]
The Flying Dutchman (Vanderdecken) [Laws K23]
Beam of Oak (Rambling Boy, Oh Willie)
Ben Backstay
Stormy Weather Boys
Admiral Hosier's Ghost
The Fog-bound Vessel
The Wreck of the Glenaloon
Bill Jones ('Twas off the coast of Guinea Land)
Willie Was As Fine a Sailor
The Knight's Ghost [Child 265]
The Cruise of the Bouncing Sally

Some of those are a bit marginal, but most of them are clearly sailor/ghost songs.

[Some song titles in this thread have been converted to links by a Mudelf.]