The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #40410   Message #1492889
Posted By: Sailor Ron
25-May-05 - 11:29 AM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: Don't Work for the Baron Line
Subject: Lyr Add: BLOOD ON THE ICE
Charley as requested, here's another from my collection. Tune is the Irish hymn tune Slade [Be thou my vision]

O our business is bloody the truth for to tell
We're naught but a slaughter house out on the swell
There's no romance as in times long gone by
It's fire the harpoon & another whale dies.

Then it's tow it alongside & get him on board
And the flensers get working & the blood from him pours
With the aid of a winch his blubber is torn
As we strip him right down, right down to the bone.

Here on the Balaena we are stuck for eight months
It's, work, work, and more work, then collapse in your bunks
Though our business is bloody when all has been said
We have our families at home to keep fed

O the blood of the whale & the white of the ice
Are there on the funnels as our fleets devise
We are cruising along in the snow hail & sleet
South of South Georgia in Hectors Whale fleet

Title Blood on the Ice
I collected this in a v. fragmentary form whilst I was on the M.T. Hector Hawk. I "filled in the gaps". I believe that this could be the last song made up aboard a British Whaler. The Balaena was built in 1947 & sold to Japan in the mid 1960s