Somebody asked me for lyrics of this song, so I thought I'd post it here. I found it in a very interesting article, so I thought I'd post the entire article:

Someday That Ship's Gonna Sail (article by Orion Gray)



By popular demand, we are printing the lyrics to a song
that Utah Phillips sang in February at Winterfolk 17, "Ship's
Gonna Sail Someday." By way of introducing it, he told a
story about his experience helping to start a Peace Center in
his home town, Nevada City. The day after the last presidential election,
the peace organizers came into a general
meeting to discuss what went wrong, and they were "draggin'
their tails . . .just so depressed . . . it was so awful, some
people dissolved into tears. And I just couldn't let that
happen," he said.
He got fired up and reminded the group that early
organizers like Mother Jones and Joe Hill who had fought for
women's rights in the 40s, for the 8 hour-day, and for safe
working conditions, had all had to fight year after year: "It
took a long time. We're in it for a long haul, it's not as simple
as a change of administration, but a systemic change, the way
that we do things, the way that we use our lives, the way that
we use our labor.
"And there's a lot of loose talk: 'I'm gonna go to Canada!
I'm gonna go to New Zealand!' And I think about those
women in the Lawrence textile strike, in 1912, immigrant
women . . . dying at the average age of 26 because of dust in
the weave rooms. Did they walk away from it, did they go
back to Canada, to their homelands? No sir, they fought, and
they organized, and they won . . . We can win! We can win!
"And then I got them all singing that song . . . and I
wanna sing it, especially now. About Sojourner Truth, and Joe
Hill, and Eugene Deb . . . They were all building a ship: a nail
here, a plank here. None of them ever believed they were
gonna sail on that ship, but it was no excuse to not build it.
When they got too old to do that anymore, they passed the
tools and the skills on to the younger ones, and they kept on
building. And those tools and skills got passed on to us. And
someday that ship is gonna sail. It will!"

SOMEDAY THAT SHIP GONNA SAIL
(U. Utah Phillips)

Sojourner Truth said, "Ain't I a woman?"
Ship gonna sail, gonna sail someday

Mother Jones said, "No child labor!"
Ship gonna sail, gonna sail someday

Joe Hill said, "Don't mourn, organize."
Ship gonna sail, gonna sail someday

Gene Deb (Debs) said, "Well, While there's a soul in prison!" (union leader Eugene V. Debs?)
Ship gonna sail, gonna sail someday

We're working on a ship, may never sail on it,
Ship gonna sail, gonna sail someday
Working on a ship, may never sail on it,
Gonna build it anyway.

Marie (Maurice) Sugar said, "Sit down, sit down!"
Ship gonna sail, gonna sail someday

Paul Robeson said, "I won't stop singin!"
Ship gonna sail, gonna sail someday

Martin Luther King said, "I have a dream!"
Ship gonna sail, gonna sail someday

Malcolm X said, "Power to the people!"
Ship gonna sail, gonna sail someday

We're working on a ship, may never sail on it,
Ship gonna sail, gonna sail someday
Working on a ship, may never sail on it,
Gonna build it anyway.

Cesar Chavez said, "Viva la Huelga!"
Ship gonna sail, gonna sail someday

Dorothy Day said, "Swords into plowshares!"
Ship gonna sail, gonna sail someday

Judy Barry (Judi Bari) said, "No compromise!"
Ship gonna sail, gonna sail someday

Daniel Berrigan [or Phil] said, "No more atom bombs!"
Ship gonna sail, gonna sail someday

Working on a ship, may never sail on it,
Ship gonna sail, gonna sail someday
Working on a ship, may never sail on it,
Gonna build it anyway.

They're all gone, and we're still building,
Ship gonna sail, gonna sail someday
With hand and heart, and mind and muscle.
Ship gonna sail, gonna sail someday

Working on a ship, may never sail on it,
Ship gonna sail, gonna sail someday
Working on a ship, may never sail on it,
Gonna build it anyway.

Article by Orion Gray, www.sistersoftheroad.org/images/2005_Spring.pdf

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Note from Joe Offer: this transcription contains some mistakes. Some were from the transcriber, and some were most probably mistakes made by Utah Phillips. I've corrected the more glaring mistakes above. For clarification, see the discussion below.
2 November 2010