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THE WARD LINE Lead: Peter

A cargo-loading chantey collected by Ivan H. Walton, from the recently published book Windjammers: Songs of the Great Lakes Sailors.

LYRICS:

Cap'n's in the pilothouse ringin' the bell
Chorus: Who's on the way, boys, who's on the way?
And the mate's down a-tween decks givin' the boys hell
Chorus: Tell me where you goin'

I'd rather be dead and lyin' in the sand
Than make another trip on the Old Black Sam

Her smokestack's black and her whistle's brown
An' I wish to the Lord I'd a-stayed in town

Get along there, Mose, your feet ain't stuck
Just hump your back and-a push that truck

It takes tons o' copper for to fill that hold
Step along there, Buddy, God damn your soul!

Roll 'em up that long gangplank
It'll make you thin and lean and lank

City folks they's all gone to bed
But we push copper until we's decd

The Cap'n, he gives up a tub of suds
It'll burn your belly and rot your guts!

Now jus' one drink from the Cap'n's tin
It'll make your feel like committin' sin

Lake Superior is big and rough
And for this old trucker one trip's enough

Now I'm a-goin' back to ol' Detroit
And no more workin' both day and night

Now I'm a-goin' down to Baltimore
And I ain't a-gonna work at all – no more!

NOTES:

Another cargo-loading shanty from the Great Lakes of America. I first heard this sung by the East Coast shanty group The Boarding Party. It was one of the songs collected by Ivan H. Walton and appears in the recently published book Windjammers: Songs of the Great Lakes Sailors. Lyrics used are taken out of dialect shown in the book to avoid some highly offensive language.

Notes from the book about this song:

There is mystery in this song – or at least in its recovery – and the mystery reveals the strange lives and turns these songs took. Throughout the Upper Great Lakes, sailors know the Ward Line and the work chantey of the black men who trucked the iron ore and copper pigs that filled the boats' holds. Captain Eber Brock Ward became Michigan's richest man with his ventures in steelmaking, glass making, real estate, and banking. Ward's wealth was rooted in shipping, the family business started by his uncle Sam at Marine City, Michigan, in 1820. Although E.B. Ward dropped dead on the streets of Detroit in 1875, his shipping business survived, as did this song about one of the most prominent Ward Line vessels, the Sam Ward. Nicknamed the "Old Black Sam" for its distinctive paint job, the side-wheeler steamed between Michigan's Lake Superior copper country and the ports of Detroit, Cleveland, and Buffalo. Captain Harvey Kendall of Marysville, Michigan, claimed to have served as mate for several seasons on the "Old Black Sam." The mystery is that the vessel was lost in 1861, making it unlikely that Kendall had ever served on it. And why should verses mention vessels that were not around while the Sam Ward sailed? The explanation might be that the song outlived its namesake, and grew with additions and embellishments.

Kendall said that the steamer would stop at Detroit on its upbound trip and ship a team of twenty or more black men to load the copper pigs waiting at the Keweenaw Peninsula on Lake Superior. The men would stay on until after they had unloaded the pigs at their destination, received their substandard wages (about fifty cents per day), and been put off at Detroit. The deckhands unloaded the "Old Black Sam" with hand trucks or wheelbarrows. Pushing their heavy loads in an endless loop between vessel and warehouse, the men worked continuously with only brief time-outs. It took two or three laborious days to load a cargo of copper this way. During the long, tedious work and for similar chores, the men sang. They preferred chanteys for their steady rhythm, improvisation, and group choruses. When the work slowed, an officer would try to pick up the pace by tapping out a quicker rhythm on the ship's bell. If there was a musician in the group, he might be called up to play a lively tune on the upper deck, above the gangway where the copper-wheeling circle looped into and out of the boat. On at least one occasion, the officers served the men a tub of "suds" – liquor that had been watered down and doped up with hot peppers. "Then," said Kendall, "you ought to see the copper come aboard."

Kendall said that the song had no particular beginning, order, or end, that choruses generally didn't make much sense, but that the tune invariably had a good, marked, and relatively slow rhythm. "The Ward Line" stuck with Kendall long after other songs had passed out of his memory. "I probably remember it because of the choruses," he said. "Even they knew they weren't goin' anywhere on the wages they received and the kind of life they lead." Hence the chorus:

Who's on de way, boys, who's on de way?
Tell me, whar yo' goin'!

Most of the verses come from Captain Harvel Kendall and his son, Earl, and other Ward Line officers. They included John E. Hayes of the propeller Wm. H. Stevens, Grafton McDonald of Marine City, and C.D.Second, interviewed on September15, 1933, at Cleveland. This song was retold in dialect, much as the scow songs later in this book are told in French or Scandinavian. This song is included at length, despite some offensive lyrics, as testimony to an African American presence on the Lakes and as a reminder of the working conditions.

Kendall recalls that soloists who came up with original couplets were great crowd pleasers and that humor was highly prized. One Sunday morning as chanteying filled the air above the Houghton waterfront, Kendal recalled, a delegation from a waterfront church approached the vessel to ask that the men be quieted so that services could continue. As the delegation approached, a new couplet rang out:

Der come mister parson in his long black coat,
Who's on de way, boys, who's on de way?
He'll go t'Heav'n, a'ridin' on a goat!
Tell me whar yo' goin'!

The couplet drew a hearty laugh, but Kendall quieted the men, who pushed their trucks in silence for a few minutes as the delegation made its request and then headed back to church. Then the men raised their voices to the heavens in a traditional hymn that stirred his heart.

Kendall recalled a late-season trip that gave birth to another couplet. One night, ice closed in on a loaded vessel downbound through Mud Lake, now Munuscong Lake, in the St. Marys River. At first light, Kendall took the deck crew over the side to cut the ice and free the boat. The temperature was exhilarating in the extreme, but the work was tedious and the men soon struck up "The Ward Line." Kendall remembered these line from that frozen autumn morning:

I'se a'goin' back whar de shugga' can grow,
Who's on de way, boys, who's on de way?
I'se a'goin' far away from dis ice an' snow.
Tell me, whar yo' goin'!

Frank Mahaffey of Port Colborne, Ontario, recalled teams of black men with wheelbarrows who used to "coal up" steamboats and tugs at Amherstburg, Ontario, and other ports and who sang the same chantey. One day, a worker with a squeaky wheelbarrow had asked Mahaffey for some grease. "I told him where the grease was," Mahaffey said, "but he didn't want to be bothered, and so continued without using any. Shortly afterward at a break in the song when, of course, he was near enough so I would have to hear him, he sang":

Dis one-wheeled buggy is cryin' cus she's ol'
Who's on de way, boys, who's on de way?
By 'n' by she's flop, spill all de coal.
Tell me, whar yo' goin'!

Another old sailor, Frank Murphy, recalled seeing a crew of black men pushing wheelbarrows loaded with wood at a fueling dock at Amherstburg, where the Detroit River enters Lake Erie. He recalled little except the oft-repeated line:

Beech an' maple, beech an' maple
Shove dat co'd wood long's you's able