This is a song about shipbuilding in the North East of England in the 1920s...
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Story behind the song
This is the first of three songs that we have recorded as near to a live sound as we can get with the present line up.
Just acoustic guitar, double bass, keys and vocals plus some percussion - in this song hammer and spanner.
There is no studio trickery, autotuning, big band arrangement etc, so this is how we will sound when we play live [apart from the fact that we want a female vocalist to take the lead vocals]...
Lyrics
Son of a son of a sailors son
At five o clock in the morning
In this year of 1923
The flat-capped workers make their way
To dry dock seven B
Showered with sparks from the welding arcs
That light those steel walls
Imune to the noise those shipyard boys
Don't hear the rivet hammers as they fall
Sail away now on your big ship ocean liner sail away
Their soot grimed red brick cottages
Are overcrowded cold and damp
Cheaply built those back-to-backs
Stand like a prison camp
But the hulking ship on its wooden slip
Dominates the whole locality
With fitments cloaked in brass and oak
That mock the workers poverty
Sail away now on your big ship ocean liner sail away
The ship was launched with the proper pomp
The local brass band played
All the workers gathered round
To cheer the liner they had made
And when at last that ship sailed past
On a cruise to warmer climes
The shipyard lads those sons and dads
Well they were all left far behind
Sail away now on your big ship ocean liner sail away