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Lament for the Hull Trawlers

[ Roud - ; Mudcat 12574 ; Frankie Armsteong]

Frankie Armstrong wrote Lament for the Hull Trawlers to a tune by Ewan Maccoll and sang it in 1975 on her Topic album Songs and Ballads. A.L. Lloyd noted:

In February 1968 the country was moved by the sad loss of three British trawlers off the cold coast of lceland. Frankie Armstrong says: “Many of us, including myself, had been ignorant till then of the appalling conditions in which trawlermen worked, and it was largely as a result of the protests of the fishermen’s wives and mothers that the public was made aware. I just happened to be singing in Hull and Grimsby at the time, so I tried to capture some of my feelings in song.” Frankie wrote the words, and Ewan MacColl made the tune.

Lyrics

Frankie Armstrong sings Lament for the Hull Trawlers

Mist hangs heavy over the land
Over the estuary
Shrouding the ships that move from the docks
Down the Humber to the sea
Bitter the winds and heavy the billows
And freezing the hail and rain
When three fishing trawlers sailed out on the tide
And never returned again

Off to the coast of Iceland they steered
In the first month of the year
When winter gales blow bitter and cold
And women must wait and fear
For no matter the storm, no matter the danger
The profits have got to be made
When the owners give orders the boats must go out
They sail to a fisherman’s grave

For two weeks and more no signal was heard
From the Saint Romanus crew
At length the owners ordered a search
By the end of a week they knew
The Romanus was gone, the Peridot too
Lost in the cold Northern grounds
Pulled down by the ice on the rigging and deck
Forty brave seamen were drowned

The owners refused to meet with the wives
Who said they were to blame
When the news came in of a third trawler lost
Ross Cleveland was her name
The cold Northern ice had captured and drowned her
The Isa Fjord was her grave
Eighteen good trawlermen followed her down
Only the one man was saved

Mist hangs heavy over the land
Over the estuary
Shrouding the ships that move from the docks
Down the Humber to the sea
Cold roll the waves on the graves of the seamen
Warm flow the tears of their wives
But frozen the hearts of the men who have built
Their fortunes on fishermen’s lives