Motley Words

There’s a ship in the Tropics a ‘foaming along,
With every stitch drawing, the wind blowing strong,
The white caps around her, all breaking in spray,
For the girls have got hold of her tow-rope today,

An’ it’s haul away girls, steady and true,
Polly and Dolly and Sally and Sue,
Mothers, wives, sisters, sweethearts and all,
An’ it’s haul away, all the way, haul away, haul.

She’s logging sixteen as she speeds from the South,
A wind in her royals, a bone in her mouth,
With a wake like a millrace she speeds on her way,
For the girls have got hold of her tow-rope today.

The Captain he stood on the poop at high-noon,
He paced fore-and-aft and he whistled a tune,
Then he put by his sextant and this he did say:
“The girls have got hold of our tow-rope today.”

Hear the good Trade Wind a-singing aloud,
A “homeward bound” shanty in sheet and in shroud,
Hear how he whistles in halliard and stay,
“The girls have got hold of our tow-rope today.”