The Good Ship Calibar

Lyrics courtesy of www.sailorsongs.com

Come all you dry land sailors and listen to me song     

It’s only forty verses and I won’t detain you long

It’s all about the adventures of this old Lisbon tar

Who sailed as man before the mast on the good ship Calibar

The Calibar was a spanking craft it wasn’t rigged fore and aft

Her helm it stuck out far behind and her wheel was a great big shaft

With half a gale to fill her sail she do one knot per hour

She’s the fastest barge on the Lagan canal and she’s only one horsepower

The captain was a strapping lad and he stood just four foot two

His eyes were black, his nose was broke and his hair was a Prussian blue

He wore a leather medal that he’d won in the Crimea War

And the captain’s wife was the passenger’s cook on the good ship Calibar

The captain said to me me lads "Look here me lad" said he

Would you like to be a sailor and sail the seven seas

Would you like to be a sailor and on foreign seas to roll

For we’re on the way to Portadown with half a ton of coal

It was early the next morning the weather it being sublime

Whilst passing under the old Queen Bridge we heard the Albert Chime

Whilst going along by the gasworks straight a very dangerous part

We ran aground on a lump of coal that wasn’t marked down on the chart

Then all became confusion and the stormy winds did blow

The bosun slipped on an orange peel fell into the hold below

Put on more speed the captain cried for we are sorely pressed

The engineer from the bank replied  the horse is doing his best

Then we all fell into the water and we all let out a roar

There was an old farmer standing there

And he threw us the end of his gallooses and he pulled us all ashore

It’s no more I’ll be a sailor and sail the raging main

And the next time I go to Portadown, I’ll go by the bloody train

 

Lyrics courtesy of www.sailorsongs.com