138 - Sugar in the Hold

Words: Traditional
Tune: Traditonal

This song was created and sung by Black roustabouts — the deckhands and cargo loaders who worked the Mississippi River levees during the Reconstruction era. Though legally free, these workers faced brutally harsh, low-paying, and exploitative conditions that heavily mirrored the plantation labor of the pre-Civil War South.

Well, I wish I was in Mobile Bay
Screwing cotton all the day
But I’m stowing sugar in the hold below
Below, below, below

Hey, ho, below, below
Stowing sugar in the hold below
Hey, ho, below, below
Stowing sugar in the hold below

The J.M. White, she’s a new design
Stern to stem she’s mighty fine
She can beat any boat on the New Orleans line
Stowing sugar in the hold below

Hey, ho, below, below…

The engineer shouts through his trumpet
“Tell the mate we’ve got bad news
Can’t get no steam for the fire in the flue”
Stowing sugar in the hold below

Hey, ho, below, below
Stowing sugar in the hold below
Hey, ho, below, below
Stowing sugar in the hold below

The captain’s on the quarter deck
Scratchin’ away at his old neck
Heave the larboard lead, and let her go
Stowing sugar in the hold below

Hey, ho, below, below…