Well, I've still been working on this one and besides some additional wording changes I've decided to add an optional chorus, from the last four lines of the last verse. Here's how she runs now:

The Mary-3

(Original words by Jon Campbell
As recorded on CD KEEP ON FISHING, © 2000
Adapted by Charlie Ipcar, 3/10/03)

G---C---G-------------C-G-------------------------D--G
She was built back in the forties, to help out in the War;
D--G---C-------------------------------D--------------------------
She was just a coastal tanker, never ventured far from shore;
-----G-C--G------------C---G-------------------------------D----G
And if you saw her on the Hudson, you'd wonder what she's for,
D-----G--C-------------------------------------D------------G-D7
Cause she looked a lot like what she was, a floating di-no-saur.
----------------------------------------------C----------------------G
And she'd take a load of benzene from Bayonne to Hac-ken-sack,
--------D7---------------------------------------C------------------D
And the bunker down to Brooklyn, and the high-test coming back;
--------G------------C----G----------------------------------D--G
See the Captain up there ringing bells, like a trolley on the track,
-------C-----------------------------------------D---------------------D7
As she curves around the headland, and he swings her bow on back.

Chorus:
D7---------------------C----------------------G
In my mind I see her, steaming round the bend,
-----D7-----------------------------------C--------------------D
Her bow cuts through the water, her journey knows no end;
----G-----------------C--G-------------------------D--G
She plows on down the river, at the closing of the day,
--------------C---------------------------------D------------------D7
And may the Mary still go lightly, as she glides across the bay.

She'd scatter schools of Whitefish when her screws began to turn,
She'd always blow a smoke ring when her stack began to burn,
And you'd have to shut the engines down before she'd go astern;
Now all those tricks to handle her, no one else will learn;
While up there in the wheelhouse there's the silence of the bell;
No passage to Poughkeepsie, from the Congo to the Kills;
Though the Captain knows the vessel, from the radar to the keel,
And a man's a man for all of that, a ship is merely steel. (CHO)

The Coast Guard says her days are done, to the smelter she must go,
To be guardrails out in Iowa, or to plow New Hampshire snow,
And she'll go where they are wanting steel, her last trip has been made;
They'll be cutting up the Mary; just a million razor blades;
But in my mind I see her, steaming round the bend,
Her bow cuts through the water, her journey knows no end;
She plows on down the river, at the closing of the day,
And may the Mary still go lightly, as she glides across the bay. (CHO)

Cheerily,
Charley Noble