Here is the song, as Larry wrote it:
GET HER INTO SHORE
(Larry Kaplan)
Well we set our traps in the bitter cold
On the third day of the year
There was three of us then
We were the youngest of ten
Two for lines, and one to steer
When it blows Northeast on the Georges Bank
You don't like to take your time
But the engine was old
It didn't like the cold
And we fell back on our lines
CHORUS
Get her into shore
She can't take it anymore
We're too far from home
It's gonna break her bones
Can't you get her into shore?
Jack throws the switch
He says, you old sonofabitch,
What the hell do you think you're doing?
Well you've brought us to the poor house
Too many times
You ain't taking us to our ruin
But the line went slack
We saw the stern turn back
And we started up again
But she just tightened up
And I knew we were stuck
Lying broadside in the wind
Get her into shore…
Tom picks up the axe
Cuts us free from the traps
He swung so hard he smashed the rail
Then he looks hard at me
And he spits in the sea
His face was whiter than the hail
We tried her again
Gave her all that we could
And we felt that screw turn round
And I remember I prayed
For some more steerage way
On that black and ugly ground
Get her into shore…
Jack puts her hard over
So to run with the tide
But she fell into the trough
And with her side to the swell
She just leaned in and fell
And I knew we all were lost
And all that I saw
Was her rotten old keel
With that line flung across her stern
But I couldn't hold to her
And I couldn't go down
I just wished I'd never been born
Get her into shore…
Well the tide runs hard
In the wintertime
You're a fool to go and try
God help the poor man
Who is born on the sea
God save the poor ones who try (die)
Words and Music by Larry Kaplan
©, 1977, Hannah Lane Music, BMI
Written one February in Providence, RI following a particularly bad
ice storm, and thinking about people who make their living at sea in
all kinds of weather. A few days after I wrote the song, a Providence Journal article appeared describing a very similar incident, with three
lost. L.K.
I couldn't find a Larry Kaplan recording of this song, but Gordon Bok did a nice recording on his Return to the Land album.
Here's a YouTube Recording of the song by Bob Walser.
Oh, and a Polish version!
-Joe-
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sj