Farewell, old boat, and precious freight, McKay and his staunch, strong crew, No more at home shall the cargo wait, For loved ones to come with you. The work she did no other would do, Success would the effort crown, But oh! the anguish of waiting hearts, When the Manistee went down.
CHORUS: Oh! God, it must have been dreadful, To freeze and then to drown, In a storm on Lake Superior, When the Manistee went down.
Fond memory oft will picture here still, Her cabins and decks grow dear, In a storm that made every fiber thrill, McKay spoke words of cheer. Farewell, old boat, and gallant crew, Love will your memories crown, Bot, oh! the darkness, pain and grief, When the Manistee went down.
Another scene of horror, Came when this deep, cold lake, The schooner M. A. Hulbert, with, Twenty brave, strong men, did take. It was next they should lie beneath the wave, When her ballast above were o’er, But we long the helpless ones to save, Whose voices we hear no more.
We have another song this month from the pen of James J. Somers who came to Duluth at age 17 from the Georgian Bay region of Ontario. He was in Duluth in November 1883 when the packet steamer Manistee left Duluth harbor for Ontonagon, Michigan never to return. Tragedy struck again that December when the schooner Mary Ann Hulbert, also out of Duluth, sank near St. Ignace Island at the northern end of Lake Superior.
As with most other songs in Somers’ book, he left us no melody for this one. Andy Irvine’s version of Pat Reilly came into my head when I was looking at Somers’ text so I have tried to adapt it to that melody here. I made a few edits to Somers’ words. The original, along with the rest of his book “Jim’s Western Gems” is available in digital form via archive.org.
In this world of sorrow, of toil and regret, there are scenes I would gladly pass o’er, But stern duty compels that each fact must be told, so through life we may check them the more; Is it right that a man who has well earned his pay, on the pipes by the sweat of his brow, Should wait like a beggar on green day by day, or else home in hunger to go? Don’t show any favor to friend or to foe, the beggar or prince at your door; If you always do right you will get your reward, but never go back on the poor.
From the wild waste of waters there came a death cry, as dashed on an iron bound shore, A noble ship struck in the darkness of night, and sank midst the tempest’s loud roar; The captain asleep and the men of their post, with the coal and provision run short, While the doomed ones they hoped for that bright Western land, which in sweet joyous dreams they had sought. Can it be such neglect shall by us be forgot, or that money will triumph once more? A good, willing hand, a stout branch and a rope, for those who go back on the poor!
When the divers went down ’neath the wreck for to search, for the bodies that lay far below, “It’s nothing but a steerage,” was oft the remark, as a ghastly corpse came up to view; As if only a steerage could shut out a soul, because poverty claimed him her own, As if dollars and dimes was the source of all worth, and the road to all good that is known. But the white star must change her color aloft, to blood red afloat and ashore, Till the steamer Atlantic is forgotten by time, with her cargo of unburied poor.
This month we have another song from the repertoire of Irish-Minnesotan Michael Dean. The song itself is fairly obscure but its moral is one found with some frequency in Dean’s Flying Cloud songster. The 1922 book contains several songs encouraging sympathy for the plight of the poor, wayward and elderly. These include expressions of working class grief like “The Tramp’s Lament” and “The Long Shoreman’s Strike” and the tear jerking “She May Have Seen Better Days” about a girl huddled on the street in a big city who “was once someone’s joy, cast aside like a toy.” Dean also sang three songs specifically about elderly people cast out by their families to live out their days in the county almshouse: “Just Tell Them That You Saw Me,” “I Told Them That I Saw You” (a response to the former) and “Over the Hills to the Poor House.” Another song, “Jim Fisk,” includes the same repeating admonition to “never go back on the poor” that appears in this month’s song. Of all these, “Jim Fisk” seems to have been the most popular across the north woods. (The song is fascinating for its use of Fisk, a famous robber baron of the era, as an exemplar of ethical behavior—seemingly because he provided aid after the Great Chicago Fire and “did all his deeds, both the good and the bad, in the broad, open light of the day!”)
Sentimental songs advocating charity and mercy for the poor were common and popular on late 19th century music hall stages and in oral tradition. They may have had a special resonance for Dean who no doubt met many the wayward son as a saloonkeeper in logging era Minnesota. Dean also owned a farm east of Hinckley that he sold to Pine County in 1905 to establish the county’s first poor farm. Dean stayed on as the institution’s manager for two years where he, again, would have met characters reminiscent of these songs.
You gentlemen of England far and near, Who live at ease free from all care, It’s little do you think and it’s little do you know, What we poor seamen undergo, Chorus: With the wind sou’west and a dismal sky, And the ruffling seas rolled mountains high.
On the second day of April, ‘twas on that day, When our captain called us all away, He took us from our native shore, While the wind sou’west and loud did roar.
On the fifth day of April, ‘twas on that day, When we spied land on the lo’ward lay, We saw three ships to the bottom go, While we, poor souls, tossed to and fro.
On the sixth day of April, ‘twas on that day, When our capstan and foremast washed away, Our mast being gone, the ship sprang a leak, And we thought we should sink in the watery deep.
The second mate and eighteen more, Got into the longboat and rowed for shore, But what must have been for their poor wives, A-losing their husbands’ precious lives?
On the seventh day of April, ‘twas on that day, When we arrived in Plymouth Bay, What a dismal tale had we for to tell, Of how we acted in the gale.
We return this month to the fantastic repertoire of singer Carrie Grover (1879-1959) who grew up in Nova Scotia and lived her adult life in Maine. “The Wind Sou’west” appears in her published songbook “A Heritage of Songs” where she classifies it as one of her father’s songs. Her father, George Craft Spinney, was born in 1837 and spent many years working on merchant vessels where he learned many sea songs. This song appears to be a variant of an English song dating to the late 18th century often titled “You Gentlemen of England” but Grover’s version is pretty unique with a localized New England reference to Plymouth Bay. No English versions I have seen include a chorus.
Thanks to the incredible work of singer and researcher Julie Mainstone Savas, we now have the website The Carrie Grover Project which includes transcriptions of all the songs in “Heritage of Songs” and more plus some audio recordings of Grover. The site is well worth checking out. There you can hear a recording of Grover singing the above (from which I made my own transcription). In it, Grover makes masterful use of the traditional singer’s trick of singing an “in between” third scale degree – somewhere between major and minor – that, to me, gives the song a perfect haunting quality.
