While The Billy BoilsSearchFathoms deep on the ocean floor,Where sightless stare the dead men’s eyes;A measured mile from the sounding shoreThe rusting collier’s carcase lies.Merely one of a welter of wrecks,Lost in the ruin the storm has wrought;The sea-slugs sliming her slanting decks,Lies the ship that left with a list to port!
They must carry the coal from port to port,From the colliery dock to the city quay.But the gulls to-day in-shore cavort,An omen sure of storms to be.The winches whine and the derricks drone,The cables clank and the baskets swing;And Plimsoll marks are little knownIn the smoky ports where Coal is king.Then it’s “Close the hatches and stand by steam,Half astern — and full ahead!”And the coastal collier stirs the streamTill she bumps the bar on the harbor bed.While night winds moan like a soul distraught,To ships that leave with a list to port.
She buries her bows in the billows green,Her scuttering blades the rivets rip;But the cry for Coal is clear and keen,So it’s do or drown on the coffin ship.Her stern-post stirs the shifting sand,Her racing engines rack her ribs;The seasoned sailor and casual hand,Sigh in their souls for longshore cribs.While her decks a-wash to the whitening waves,And her pistons panting weak and slow,She shudders above the deep-sea graves,Where the ill-found ships of the service go.
The wise sea-Solomon’s verdict’s short —“She left with rather a list to port.”When the day is bright and the sea is blue,It is good on a liner to laze along;And wait, as most of us dawdlers do,For the grateful lilt of the luncheon gong.It is cheery to chat to the captain trim,Who steers at night by the stars above,To dance on deck in the gloaming dim,And sing the songs of languid love.But it’s hell-for-leather aboard the bargeThat waddles along in the liner’s wake;When the great grey wolves of the ocean chargeAnd the straining cross-heads clank and quakeGod help the deep-deck collier caughtIn a coastal storm with a list to port!
O, men who never go down in shipsTo the sea that carries our human-kind;Chorus their cause with clarion lips,And unto their hardship be not blind.The liner stately, the sluggish scow,The trading tramp or the cargo tank,The coaster that punches her plated bowOn the rocky fangs of a reefy bank.All these, all these have human lives,Husbands, brothers and sturdy sons;All these, all these have mothers and wivesShiv’ring ashore when the cloud-wrack runs.For life is hard and shrift is shortOn ships that leave with a list to port!