I wrote this song last week with Chris Hastings my songwriting partner.Its called "Shipbreakers" and is based on the shipbreaking wharf at Briton Ferry near Neath in South Wales


                   SHIPBREAKING
The river runs down
To the vast endless ocean
Its quiet this morning
But I can recall
When frigates and freighters
Were lined up on the dockside
To be broken for scrap
And scavenged by all
The big old ships used to sail up the river
They'd cross the wild ocean
From the New Jersey shore
To the Giant's Grave wharfside
Where the breakers were waiting
To open each vessel
To its skeleton core.

And me and my old pals
With screwdrivers and spanners
We dismantle the fittings
Then salvage the scrap
One rustbucket butting
Its way up from Luanda
Almost sank off Gibralter
She was a death trap
The big old ships used to sail up the river
We called it the river-of no return
From Lisbon and Lagos
From Belfast and Boston
We tore out their innards
From the bow to the stern.

We were the shipbreakers
Spent our lives in the dockyard
Then the contracts dried up
The ships failed to arrive
We were all laid off
And soon we were paid off
The young ones moved elsewhere
They had to survive
The boats are now broken
On some Bangladesh sandbank
The river a reminder
For us in these parts
The town is so humdrum
The shops all rundown
We no longer break old ships
They just old hearts.

CHORUS
Where the gulls made a din
The ships once sailed in
Now there's an empty sea and the sky

Written by
Huw Pudner and Chris Hastings