112 - Towrope Girls

Words: Cicely Fox Smith
Tune: Traditional

Oh, a ship in the Tropics, a-foaming along,
With every stitch drawing, the Trade blowing strong,
The white caps around her all breaking in spray,
For the girls have got hold of her towrope today.

And it’s haul away, girls, steady an’ true,
Polly and Dolly and Sally and Sue, —
Mothers and sisters an’ sweethearts and all,
Haul away, all the way, haul away, haul!

The Old Man he stood on the poop at high noon;
He paced fore and aft and he whistled a tune,
Then put by his sextant and thus he did say:
“The girls have got hold of her towrope today.”

And it’s haul away, girls…

“Of cargoes and charters we’ve had our full share,
Of grain and of lumber enough and to spare.
Of nitrates at Taltal and rice for Bombay,
And the girls have got hold of our tow-rope today.”

And it’s haul away, girls, steady an’ true,
Polly and Dolly and Sally and Sue, —
Mothers and sisters an’ sweethearts and all,
Haul away, all the way, haul away, haul!

“She has dipped her yards under, hove to off the Horn,
In the fog and the floes she has drifted forlorn,
Becalmed in the Doldrums a week long she lay,
But the girls have got hold of her towrope today.”

And it’s haul away, girls…

Oh, hear the good Trade wind a-singing aloud,
A homeward bound shanty in sheet and in shroud,
Oh, hear how he whistles in the halliard and stay,
“The girls have got hold of the towrope today!”

And it’s haul away, girls, steady an’ true,
Polly and Dolly and Sally and Sue, —
Mothers and sisters an’ sweethearts and all,
Haul away, all the way, haul away, haul!

And it’s oh! for the chops of the Channel at last,
The cheer that goes up when the tug hawser’s passed —
The mate’s “That’ll do” — and a fourteen months’ pay —
For the girls have got hold of our towrope today.