Here's another one for all of you who enjoyed Gordon Lightfoot's "Edmund Fitzgerald" recently posted. The Ballad of the Yarmouth Castle is another example of Lightfoot's penchant for spinning haunting sea chanties from marine disasters. The Yarmouth Castle story is even more tragic than the Edmund Fitzgerald, if that's possible.
See the wiki story here: SS Yarmouth Castle
For many years I have enjoyed those two Lightfoot songs, not only as a decidely amateur guitar player, but as a fairly professional and relatively prudent mariner.
BC
Remember this thread BC?
Where were you 35 years ago today?
by WVCottrell , Okanogan Valley, WA state, Wednesday, November 10, 2010, 19:52 (366 days ago) @ Holy Cow
edited by WVCottrell, Wednesday, November 10, 2010, 20:15
Thanks for bringing it up Senor Vaca Sacre. At that time I was at Eastern WA University, starting my final year in college in the outdoor leadership program there. Within the year, I was learning the words to Gordon Lightfoot's song and playing it on my guitar best I could. It was an inspiration to me as a young man. Later, I went to sea for to make a living. Spent 20 years doing that, and had some very harsh days on the bleak ocean. Never forgot that song or that story.
Don
Don, yes I do... (SS Yarmouth Castle, Nov 13, 1965)
> Remember this thread BC?
>
I vaguely remember posting that one, but sure don't know how you managed to dredge it up from all the postings on this board since. Good on ya, and thanks.
So here's my other favorite Lightfoot sea chanty. Ghosts of Cape Horn
I took this song with me on a tape cassette (remember those?), into the Bering, Chuckchi and Beaufort Seas. Listened to it every day while navigating the Arctic Ocean. In those days for me and my shipmates, Cape Prince of Wales was our Cape Horn. We always hoped to get south of the Bering Strait before October, sometimes we made it, sometimes we didn't.
