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Sweet Minerva

Sweet Minerva …….

Chorus

Sweet Minerva waits for me

Anchor down and homeward bound

Heading for St Andrew’s Quay

Sweet Minerva set me free

Heavy rain from Humber skies

Wipe the water from my eyes

My love’s clearly in my mind

Glad to leave this trawl behind

Chorus

Captive north of Killingholme

Wanting so much to be home

Prisoner of the waiting tide

Home and heart are still denied

Chorus

Kingston nights shine bright once more

Diamond lights and dazzling shore

Smoke house terrace, all my own

Hessle Road and harbour home

Chorus

See my woman standing by

See that rare look in her eye

Tonight I’ll hold her close to me

Forget the trials of the sea.

Chorus

Settling done and some to spare

Pay the ovel man his share

Two days on then back to sea

Arctic waters wait for me

Chorus

Sweet Minerva

Sweet Minerva………….

The Humber is a tidal river and trawlers returning

with their catches had to wait until the tide turned

before unloading their catch. The ‘ovel man was a fellow

seaman who lent money to another-usually to

someone who had settled in debt – which was

quite a regular occurrence. The favour

would be returned when the situation

was the other way around.

Here’s the Tender Comin’

Here's the tender comin'

Pressing all the men

Oh, my hinny, what shall we do then?

Here's the tender comin'

Off at Shield's bar

Here's the tender comin'

Full of men-o'-war.

They say we are bound for Spanish shores

Places I've never seen

Pity poor me a farmer's lad

Pressed by the red marine

Pity poor me a farmer's lad

Pressed by the red marine

Hide thee, canny Geordie

Hide thyself away,

Hide thee till the tender

Makes for Druid's bay;

If they catch thee Geordie

Who's to win our bread?

Me and little Jacky'd

Better off be dead.

I fear the harsh lash and stormy waves

I fear the black swollen sea

Not even the rum to make me brave

Nor dreams take me back to thee

Not even the rum to make me brave

Nor dreams take me back to thee

Here's the tender comin'

stealin' of me dear,

Oh, my hinny,

press ye out o' here;

They will send ye foreign

That is what this means,

Here's the tender comin'

Full o' red marines.

England expects so here am I

My future is torn from me

beating the drum afraid to die

death will no comfort be

beating the drum afraid to die

death will no comfort be

Here's the tender comin'

Pressing all the men

Oh, my hinny, what shall we do then?

Here's the tender comin'

Here's the tender comin

Here's the tender comin............

The most beautiful of traditional songs which we

have interrupted with our own words and tune.

Lament

In his dreams he remembers the old days

In a restless heart worn out by time

And the tales that he’s told of the old Hessle Road

Are now distant and blurred in his mind

Many days he is glad they’re behind him

When the past is a journey too long

When the good and the bad are just memories he’s had

When he can’t tell the right for the wrong

Chorus

He can’t sing a lament for the old days

Now those fishing days are through

He won’t sing a lament for the ways that are gone

And the living hell he knew

There were small cobbled ten-foots and alleys

He remembers the filth and the grime

When his ma’s biggest deal was to find the next meal

And the men were all old before time

There were fathers and sons both together

Would sail out on the early morn’s tide

And the mothers and wives feared the worst for their lives

And for those that the men left behind.

Chorus

He remembers the town from the old days

And the smell of the fish and the seed

Of the times he was hungry but never let on

Just one starving mouth more to feed.

He can picture the girls on street corners

When the men were away at the trawl

When a few shillings more turned a wife to a whore

He still can’t make sense of it all.

Chorus

So don’t ask what he thinks of the old days

Now bulldozers are changing the land

If he had the last call, he would damn one and all

And ear the lot down with his hands.

In his dreams he remembers the old days…………

Growing up in the fishing community without a

father was perhaps the most difficult childhood

a boy could have. With no money coming in,

the choice for some women was the workhouse

or the street corner. The workhouse was

situated in what is now part of Hull Royal Infirmary.

The line ‘Now bulldozers are changing the land’ is a

tribute to Keith Marsden who wrote Hessle Road.

War Song

We stood in Hell as the bombs fell all around us,

Our bayonets were useless, and death had found the boy

We see him now, his lifeless eyes are staring

Another Flanders hero, and his mothers pride and joy

I feel no pain; we’ve marched for many days now

Beyond Le Gheir and Messines, Armentieres at dawn

When will it end, when can we come home to England

Our heads are full of killing and our limbs are weary worn.

This is the war to end all wars, they said

This is the last, the final call

We’ll never take this road again, they said

But the truth makes liars of us all.

I heard no sound, not even one bird singing

But saw the plumes of Belsen smoke, and smelled the death and fear

A young child cries, but the others cannot hear her

Her small voice, lost of innocence, drowned out amongst her tears

Look at us now, We are fearful for our brothers

Our sisters and our mothers and of everything we’ve known

We plant our fields, not knowing if tomorrow

Will bring the peace forever, to our Hiroshima home.

They came by night, by river at Dhak Hanjro

Through dark and deadly forest, seen with their stranger’s eye

At Toumorong the battleground was bloody

A hundred brave Americans each one too young to die

Their shattered dreams, betrayed by those who loved them

Impoverished and empty, they struggled every day

Homecoming seems a million miles away now

When the neighbours will not listen and they turn their face away

And so it goes, this endless round of sorrow

From the ravaged streets of Najaf, to the starving at Diafur

Can we not see, that when man abandons reason

The cause is lost, and no-one knows what they are fighting for.

How can it change, will the anger ever leave us,

Will the warlords drop their weapons

Will the conflict soon be done

Or will they reign, and their power overwhelm us

And we have to face our enemy a generation on?

Tou Morong was the site of Operation Hawthorne

- one of the most famous operations in the Vietnam war.

- It took place for 3 weeks in June 1966 and the number of

- Vietcong who perished is given at 1200. It is very

- difficult to ascertain the number of American

- dead but in the research I have done the popular

- view says the body count was 10 to 1 Vietcong to

- Americans.

Dak Hanjro was a small settlement about 300 miles south

of Hanoi –very dense forest infiltrated by VietCong.

Channels Words Micca Patterson (copyright)

The wind is from the South-West, boys, blows maybe 5 or 6
And the waves are sliding smoothly as they run
And under all plain sail we're making 8 good knots
As we make our way up Channel in the sun

It is cold early December and we're finally going home
Back to where the water is not blue but green
And the leaves have changed from orange and fallen from the trees
And I hope once more in my own bed to dream

It's a week short of a twelvemonth since we went upon our way
Down the Channel, outward bound for foreign shores
To seas as warm as blood and black velvet starlit nights
And the scurvy, rats and damned salt-water sores

We Square up at the Lizard then a little East North East
Until Portland comes up on the Port hand side
We haul her a little closer for St Catherine’s, Beachy Head
Then its sharp port through the Downs to catch the tide

We have been down to Australia, Vallipo around the Horn
And from there on to Foochow for loads of tea
And now we're bound up Channel and our voyage nearly done
London River's open wide to welcome me

We're at Southend, we're at Gravesend then we're entering Long Reach
Then off Stone House Point it all seems very slow
Then just as we pass Greenwich a little donkey tug
Drops a line to us and takes us all in tow

So we bunt and Furl up nicely and we make a harbour stow
Sharpline everything to show them what were worth
Then the Mate yells from the wheelhouse" stand by Fore and aft"
As we're gently eased at last into our berth

Then its at the Pay off table with your discharge book to stamp
And your Grip and Duffle bag in your right hand
And your oilies in a bundle tied in gantline that was spare
Then you once again step carefully onto land

Home to England, wives and Children, that are changed before our eyes
Time spent in our wooden prison, but you see
For a week or three we settle then our salty mistress calls
we all will sign on again and back to sea

Micca Patterson wrote these words and sent them to me.

I travelled from Hull to London and sang the tune I had

written into his mini disc player. At the time we were

in a rather dodgy pub in Whitechapel.

The whole thing was surreal.

The Greenland Ghost

Well me name is Michael Shaw and I’m a sailor

Although it’s many years since I have seen the ocean waves

I’ve done many thing and most have been a failure

But the sea will always follow me, and see me to me grave

When I was a lad, me father left me mother

And ran off with a docker’s wife he met one Eastertide

And me mother sighed and never took another

But cried herself to sleep at nights a bottle by her side

I’ve seen places other men can only dream of

And cursed my very living when it took me back to sea

There are better ways of life than of a sailors

But the Good Lord had decided it’s the only one for me.

I resolved to go to sea and earn a living

I’d brothers and I’d sisters, not a scrap of food between

And me mother was so grateful for the giving

That kept her from the workhouse

Where she went when times were lean

I had nothing but the clothes that I stood up in

When at fourteen years of age I joined the Hamlyn company

And someone up in Heaven had been watching

Cos he sent a guardian angel to protect me on the sea

Chorus

Well our captain he was fair and was forgiving

He wouldn’t stand for idlers and he kept an honest crew

If you worked hard then he saw you earned a living

He was more than any father least of all the one I knew

He captained many trawlers on the Humber

He stood on watch so long I swear he kept those storms at bay

Fished Arctic grounds too many times to number

Searching for the mighty cod, so we could earn our pay

Chorus

Well I’ve sailed with stormy bastards up in Iceland

And cast the nets in oceans that have swept good men away

I have danced with death and icebergs up in Greenland

Clung to life and limb and prayed I’d live to spend me pay

And looking back I know God was sailor,

Pulling down the hatches when the mighty gales did blow,

He never was the type to ever fail yer

And when we meet in Heaven I’ll be sure to let him know

Some trawler captain’s would sail in extreme weathers

hatches open - risking the lives of the crew for a few more

fish. These men were called the ‘Stormy Bastards’ often

earning secret bonuses that they would not pass on to the

crew. Sidney Sparkes was the complete opposite of this, a

captain who would stay on watch for hours, his crew’s safety

being paramount. He was nicknamed the Greenland Ghost.

Don’t Look Back

Said the wise man to his son I have fought and I have cried

I have chosen well and wisely I have watched as brave men died

I have ghosts that visit nightly and reasons bona fide