Henry's Songbook

Once more for Greenland we are bound
To leave you all behind
Our ship is painted green and our blubber hooks are keen
And we sail before the icy wind

We left our sweethearts and our wives
A-weeping on the pier
Cheer up, my dears, we soon shall return
For it's only half a year

With tarry dress we reached Stromness
Where we did go ashore
With whalermen so scarce and the water even less
We'll have to take on more

And when we came to the northern ice
We crowded on full sail
Each boat well-manned with a keen and lively band
All for to hunt the whale

Now dark and dreary grows the night
And the stars begin to burn
With the chasing of the whale and the trying of the oil
And it seems like we'll never return

Our six-month being done, we tie up again
And the lads all go ashore
With plenty of brass and a bonny bonny lass
For to make them taverns roar

To Greenland's coast we'll drink a toast
And to them we love so dear
And across the icy main to the whaling grounds again
We'll take a trip next year

(as sung by A. L. Lloyd)

[1967:] Chase of right whale, West Greenland, c. 1840.
By the 1840s, British whaling reached a low ebb; only fourteen vessels were leaving our ports. [...] When the ships left London, Hull, Dundee for the northern grounds, the yards would [be] decorated with ribbons snatched from any pretty girls venturing near the quay, and the men would sing on the maindeck till the harbour bar was passed. They would put in at the Orkneys or Shetlands to take on fresh provisions and water, and perhaps a man or two to complete the crew, and then off to the cold coast of Greenland. This tender farewell song was a favourite of Fred Clausen, a meat-cutter aboard the Southern Empress [the whaling ship Lloyd himself sailed in in the 1930s], and native of Stoneferry, Hull. Its elegiac tone suggests it was made by a Scottish whalerman (English whale-balladeers generally inclined to rough adventure or outspoken complaint). John Ord [...] heard the melody, or something very like it, sung by fisher-girls in north-east Scotland in the 1880s. (Notes A. L. Lloyd, 'Leviathan!')