Charley, the song got stuck in my head too! -- but I didn't mind a bit. Danny Spooner taught it in his Sea Shanties class at Augusta Vocal Week. We sang it for the "class concert" on Friday so the whole group sang it two or three times to learn it. It definitely got stuck in my head. I sang very little else (when I was by myself) for two or three weeks afterward.

Bob, thank you so much for posting the original words. Danny has changed a word here and there, but said Harry had listened to (and okay'ed) his version.

Lanfranc, I was very pleased to see the site for the Whale Chasing Men CD. Wonder if Camsco can get it? Would love to have it.

But I don't think Bob was too hard on Nic, at all! I can't imagine why Anyone would sing "little" instead of "wee" in this song. For one thing it would mess up the meter; and for another, unless the dumbing down of America has gone further than I think, most people who listen to folk music understand that "wee" means "little."

Well, I'm not opinionated or anything, am I now? :-)

But I suspect some of Nic's changes are just misheard words, not deliberate changes. Like "leave this icy hole" for "leave this icy cove" --although "icy hole" probably expresses the men's opinion better at that.

The factory ship went back to Australia for the winter, taking the men from the whale chasers (the smaller ships). Just the engineers stayed in Antartica over the winter, to repair and maintain the engines on the chasers. It's pitch dark much of that time, lonely, and of course deadly cold. A damned hard time. But that's why they were in the "wee" engine rooms of the chaser ships; to do maintenance on the engines. It was so cold that if they hadn't warmed their tools on the little stove, the tools would have frozen their hands -- or frozen to their hands, if they weren't wearing gloves to work.