Lee Murdock, The View From The Harbor, CD, Depot Recordings - DEP031, 2009, trk. 8, m. Lee Murdock, w. Robert Collen


Up Anchor

Robert "Brokenback" Collen said, "This song is about the sailorman's life at average. The melody goes after an old oyster dredger's song which was sung in Baltimore years ago." Collen, born in Belgium of an Irish father and a Scottish mother, sailed the Lakes for years and became a key informant for this collection. This song tells what men did when they were off watch and resting in their crowded forecastle quarters, bidding their time with music, coffee, cards, stories, and fighting. Collen wrote this version in a letter dated March 12, 1933.

We've got the rusty mud-hook up,
        She's green with Chicago slime;
We're sailing with a gail wind,
        No more of city's grime!
We'll head for the old blue waterways,
        And mates, we'll drink our fill
Of winds that hail across our bow
        And through the hatches spill.

We'll drink jamake* and cuss a lot,
        An' before our trip is done
We'll fight and pray and fight again
        Through spray that weighs a ton.
We'll sit around the fo'c'sle lamp,
        Each man in his bare feet;
We'll slap the greasy cards about
        In play that can't be beat.

We'll tell old yarns and talk of home
        As sailormen will do;
We'll brag of girls in other ports
        And wonder if they're true.
We'll split the old harmonica
        With all the tunes we know,
And then begin again unless
        We have a fight below.

We'll hate each other worse than rats
        That leave a sinking ship
Before we reach another port
        And give this tub the slip.
When we drop the hook the mate will say,
        "All aft and get your pay,"
An' we'll roll ashore an' spend our dough,
        Then ship another day.


Ivan Walton; Joe Grimm; Loudon G Wilson; Lee Murdock, Windjammers: songs of the Great Lakes sailors, (Detroit: Wayne State U. Press, 2002 pp. 86-87)

*Could mean either "jake" (Jamaican ginger) or "jamoke" (Mocha.)