Lyr Add: Good Old Brig

Subject: Lyr Add: Good Old Brig
From: Barry Finn
Date: 19 Nov 98 - 05:12 PM

Good Old Brig is in Stan Hugill's "Songs of the Seas" as a Norwegian pump shanty & he gives some of the verses in German, Norwegian-Danish, Swedish & in the Bergen dialect. This English version comes from George Herbert who sailed in the Baltic trades before going into the Cape Horn trades. I don't know if the tune is the same as Hugill's (I can't read music).

From London to Denmark we shipped aboard a brig
Her timbers all were holy & pulp it was her rig

Ch: So let the breezes blow, she's old & slow
We'll float across to Germany & shierk & lay below

Our foresail was all torn, we hadn't any thread
We grabbed the skipper's pants & hoisted them instead

We hadn't got a compass, we knew our way by smell
And if we went off course, the skipper would ring the bell

We hadn't got a lantern, to see us through the dark
The skipper's nose was bright enough to scare off any shark

The whellhouse it was rotten, it made the rats amused
The only thing we had to spin was grannys' spinning wheel

We should've sighted Hamburg a week ago it seems
When the lookout shouted out, he just sighted Bararbry

So we got ourselves a tugboat & towed that brig astern
And if we ever reach Hamburg some day we will return

A note on the last verse (ironic?), to tow a ship astern I believe the vessel needs to have a cutaway at the aft end of the keel, between the deadwood & the rudder (where a single prop would be), without, there's no control of reverse steerage. I don't think wooden vessels at this time were designed with cutaways.
Barry