I like the shape of her

Robert Harper

Old trawler dry docked at Hertoniemenranta. Cabin and mast in tatters. Hull looked as sound as a bell. The girth on her, the broadness of her beam. She does not deserve to be on dry land she should be in the water, her bow breasting the waves, cutting through the wet, triumphant.

Instead she is shored up with pine logs to stop her from toppling over. Her keel is in the gravel, propellor in the air, rigging slack and loose, rotted cabin home for the birds, rudder rusted.

Gray skies weeping for past glories

It was on a fair and a pleasant day
Out of Yarmouth harbor I was faring
As a cabin boy on a sailing lugger
For to hunt the bonny shoals of herring
Now the work was hard and the hours were long
And the treatment sure it took some bearing
There was little kindness and the kicks were many
As we hunted for the shoals of herring
Oh we left the home grounds in the month of June
And for canny Shiels we soon were baring
With a hundred cran of the silver darlings
That wed taken from the shoals of herring
Oh we fished the Swarth and the Broken Bank
I was a cook and Id a quarters sharing
And I used to sleep standing on me feet
And Id dream about the shoals of herring
Now youre up on deck, youre a fisherman
You can swear and show a manly bearing
Take your turn on watch with the other fellows
While youre following the shoals of herring
In the stormy seas and the living gales
Just to earn the gear that I was wearing
Sailed ten thousand miles, caught ten million fishes
We was out there hunting shoals of herring
And its night and day were faring
Come winter wave or winter gale
Sweating or cold; growing up, growing old and dying
As we hunt the bonnie shoals of herring


- Taken at 6:34 PM on May 31, 2007 - cameraphone upload by ShoZu

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