Leave the Whaling Ground               Les Ward

In Davis Strait and Greenland too,
Leave her, Johnny, leave her
The right whales here are very few,
It’s time for us to leave her.

Chorus: Leave her, Johnny, leave her,
Oh, leave her, Johnny, leave her,
Oh, it’s time to leave the Greenland trade,
And it’s time for us to leave her.

Eight months from Hull those lads have been,
Leave her, Johnny, leave her,
It’s a crying shame to come home clean,
It’s time for us to leave her.

So we bid farewell to the Greenland shore,
Leave her, Johnny, leave her,
And we think we’ll never see you more,
It’s time for us to leave her.

What little money we have made,
Leave her, Johnny, leave her
We’ll scarcely keep our family fed,
It’s time for us to leave her.

So I’ll get a job, I’ll work on shore,
Leave her, Johnny, leave her,
For the Greenland trade it is no more,
It’s time for us to leave her.

 

NOTES

Hull’s involvement in whaling (the ‘Greenland Trade’) had declined seriously in the 1830s, mainly because of overfishing. The temptation to stay too long on the fishing grounds led to ships being trapped in the ice. In 1821 twelve ships were lost, four of them from Hull.

In this song Les has adapted the well-known sea shanty ‘Leave her, Johnny’ as a lament for the end of whaling from Hull. ‘Leave her Johnny’ was traditionally used at the completion of a voyage as a pump shanty, pumping out the bilges before leaving the ship.