The Bosun's Story
"Ice" said the bosun,sniffing like a dog
Across the rail to wind'ard in the Cape Horn fog,
"Ice" said the bosun "wot sunk the Skerryvore
Time I siled onboard 'er back in seventy four".
"The Ol' Man was looney - worst I ever knew;
'E cracked on to blazes when it was thick as stew;
'E bunged through it blindfold - fourteen knots we ran
'Till we fouled a berg bigger 'n the blinkin' Calf of Man".
"We run our bows on it in the middle of the night,
An' a fallin' spar killed 'im - and **** well sarve 'im right!
We took to the longboat, and it was jump or drown ;
She'd 'ardly touched the water when the ship went down."
"We made land at daybreak - ice an' sand an' stones,
An' seabirds waitin' an' a wind that chilled your bones;
An' for two blessed months there we lived like fightin'- cocks
On the winkles an' seaweed we gathered off the rocks."
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"Till a spouter chanced to sight us , cruisin' round that way,
Or else we'd be stiff 'uns layin' there to-day;
An' ice said the bosun, sniffin' once again,
"Is a thing I've had no use for , no ,never since then."
This was written by a lady,Cicely Fox Smith, in 1931 .She captures the feeling of fear that all old blue watermen had for icebergs. A little known poem that deserves a better reading ,
BrianD
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