There's also "Don't Sign on the Emma" recorded on a CD titled Strangers on the Shore by Mike Murray and Lesley Silvester, folks from the Freemantle area:


DON'T SIGN ON THE EMMA

Stranded in Fremantle I was looking for a berth
I'd just been paid off from a Yankee whaler;
I'd heard the schooner Emma was signing on a crew
When I got to talking to another sailor.

      CHORUS:
      "Don't sign on the Emma she's not the ship for you.
      Don't sign on the Emma that's a warning;
      She's had her share of troubles and she's looking for a crew
      She's sailing from Fremantle in the morning."

(he said) "I shipped on board the Emma on her first run up the coast
The ship took all the sail that we could give her;
But before a day and night had passed a sailor we had lost
Then we lost the anchor in the De Grey River." (CHORUS)

"Next we hit the jetty when we docked at Champion Bay
The passengers and crew were all a-swearing;
The master says the compass wasn't working right today
And we'll have to try and get a different bearing." (CHORUS)

"The next trip was no better when we headed for the North
We had a load of sheep to take to Roebourne;
Then up at the Abrolhos we stranded on a reef
We had to build a raft to get the sheep home." (CHORUS)

Well, I thought about the sailor as I walked down to the quay
And I saw the Emma stranded on the sand spit;
I watched as she refloated and then she lost her masts
So I decided that the Emma wasn't my ship. (CHORUS)

Weeks went by and then the news the Emma had gone down
All the town was talking the next morning
And I thought about the words that the sailor said to me:
"Don't sign on the Emma that's a warning." (CHORUS)


Notes with CD:

The Emma was plagued with misfortune from the start. Brought to Western Australia by the pastoralist and merchant Walter Padbury in 1865, she only managed to complete two voyages up and down the coast of Western Australia, before she was lost on her third voyage, returning from Roebourne to Fremantle. Over a hundred years later her wreck was located on a reef off Coral Bay. During her short but eventful life on the coast, she suffered a host of misfortunes, and quickly gained a reputation as an unlucky ship, to be shunned by sailors.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble