"There's a bloke I sometimes want to kick the worst way in the world,"
Said Bill, while from his short black pipe the dog-watch smoke-wreaths curled,
"'E's a decent sort o' blighter, an' 'e mostly means me well,
But the 'arm that feller's done me it'd take a week to tell."
"'E spends my 'ard-earned cash on beer an' wine an' fancy gals,
'E gets me fightin' with cops an' scrappin' with my pals:
'E takes an' pawns my sea-chest when e's been an' burned my pay,
And' I've never got the bloomin' guts to up an' say 'im nay."
"'E's lost me every chanst I've 'ad o' getting' on in life:
If it 'and't been for 'im I'd 'ave a public an' a wife:
I've run my ship along of 'im an' wished I 'and't after:
Cut off my nose to spite my face an' what could you 'ave dafter?"
"There ain't no other chap alive I'd stand it from," said Bill,
"But we've allus sailed together, an' I guess we allus will:
'E's a sort o' blessed inkybus or Old Man o' the Sea,
An' there ain't no shakin' of 'im off — for why? Because 'e's me!"
Notes
From FULL SAIL: More Sea Songs & Ballads, edited by Cicely Fox Smith, published by Houghton Mifflin Co., New York, US, © 1926, pp. 81-83.
"Bill" is one of the poet's favorite sailor philosophers, along with Mike Murphy and a few others.
"Dogwatches" were a pair of two-hour watches, half the duration of a normal four-hour watch, from 4 to 8 pm. The suggestion that they were called "dogwatches" because they were "curtailed" while ingenious appears to have no foundation in fact.
Charley Noble
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Comments
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Very Deep
"Bill" was described in his own poem as being one of the oldest shellbacks on the ship that the poet sailed on from England to Victoria, British Columbia, in 1904. I think she was really fond of him, even with the "inkybus" he was burdened with.
Cheerily,
Charley Noble -
Funny
Poor Bill - he knows his faults and still doesn't change anything, but it's interesting how the character speaks of himself as a separate individual but those last few words are priceless.
Bravo Bill
Von
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