Fishing

from Fishing by Bound for the waves

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about

Song made famous by Nic Jones in his 1980 album Penguin Eggs, this is an original by folk singer Harry Robertson. The first title was Ballina Whalers, Nic Jones called it The Humpback Whale, and in our book it became Fishing, which does not seem such an apt description of the deed of trying to catch a humpback whale... Close to where Sophie was born, there is a village that used to be on the Zuiderzee in which the inhabitants all lived from whaling. Hard to believe it now that the village is completely surrounded by green fields and small ditches (all created by the Dutch ways of working against the water), but a giant whale skeleton and vicious harpoons sit in the village museum as proof. So the song actually feels like a bit of our history despite having been written by an Australian, but don't all the best folk songs give you that feeling?

lyrics

In fifty-six I sailed on board
On a ship called Byron I
She carried trawler men on deck
And a harpoon whaling gun

Chorus (after each verse):
All you trawler men, come on
Forget your snapper and your prawn
For it's out of Ballina we'll sail
Fishing for the humpback whale

A tractor for a whale winch
And the ship's an old Fairmile
Twin diesels turn the screws around
She'll whale in a fine old style

Keep a sharp look-out me lads
The whale he's on the run
And we'll drive him into Byron Bay
And we'll shoot him with our guns

The harpoon and the line fly through
Very deep into the whale
She split the timbers of the ship
With the flurry of her tail

The rigging struts are snapped in two
And we reel beneath the blow
The gunner fires a killer shot
And the humpback sank below

Make her tail fast to the bows
We've got no time for bed
For four and twenty hours each day
We kept that factory fed

Back into Ballina we steered
Tied up and stowed the gear
All hands headed for the pub
And we filled ourselves with beer

credits

from Fishing, released September 8, 2013

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Bound for the waves Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Bound for the Waves was a trio composed of Gilles Rullman, Theo Burghouts & Sophie ter Schure.

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