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FIRING THE MAURETANIA Lead Vocal: Stephen Canright

I first heard this sung by Stephen Canright at one of the Hyde Street Pier shanty sings in San Francisco. Stephen got the song from the cassette tape A Beautiful Life by the group Bermuda Quadrangle. David Jones, one of the singers in the group thinks the song was written by Redd Sullivan who, along with his partner Martin Windsor, ran the very successful Troubadour Folk Club in London from the early 1960s to the 1980s. Jeff Warner, who sings the lead on this song, agrees with David. The times, 4 to 8, 8 to 12, and 12 to 4 refer to the 4 hours on and 4 hours off shifts of the stokers. In their liner notes the Bermuda Quadrangle group says "The Fireman's Lament" or "Firing the Mauretania" was entered in English shantyman Stan Hugill's "The Bosun's Locker" column in Spin, The Folksong Magazine, Volume 1, # 9, 1962. Hugill's notes read: "Words collected and arranged by Redd Sullivan of the Thameside 4, sometime fireman himself. Tune: variant of "Paddy Works on the Railway."

Stephen Canright, who is also the Chief Curator for the Maritime Museum in San Francisco, sent me the following notes on Firing the Mauretania:

"When I first heard this song on a tape by the Bermuda Quadrangle, I was intrigued with the idea of a stoking shanty. It seemed reasonable that a rhythmic song might ease the labor of shoveling coal into the furnaces of a big steamer. Stoking was individual work, but a song might give the lads a lilt to work to and a chance to bitch about their lives. I doubt, however, that this was actually ever sung in the boiler room of the Mauretania, especially as it turns out that she was converted to oil-fire by 1921.

The passenger liner R.M.S. Mauretania, launched in 1906, was the most famous ship of her time. Until 1930 she ran for Cunard between Southampton, England and New York City, carrying 2,500 passengers and a crew of 800. For twenty years she was the fastest passenger steamer on the Atlantic run. At almost 800 feet in length, she was for a time the largest ship in the world. Her sister-ship Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat in 1915 with heavy loss of life, helping to bring the United States into the First World War. The Mauretania was finally scrapped in 1935.

The Mauretaniawas a turbine steamer. She had twenty-five steam boilers, most with eight furnaces or fire boxes, for a total of 192 furnaces. The fires were fed by stokers shoveling coal, each man tending four furnaces, so that forty-eight stokers worked each watch. The stokers worked four hours on and eight hours off, whenever the ship was at sea. It was a hard and dirty job, with gaunt, black-faced men laboring like imps in the bowels of Hell. Only by about 1930 had all of the big Atlantic liners adopted oil fire, ending this backbreaking labor."

The following Google search for "Mauretania" gives numerous links to a wealth of information about R.M.S. Mauretania:
Mauretania query

To view the Mudcat Forum thread on this song click on the following link:
Mauretania thread

LYRICS:

FIRING THE MAURETANIA Lead: Stephen Canright In nineteen hundred twenty four Found myself in Liverpool on the floor So I went to the Cunard office door Got a job on the Mauretania Chorus: Oh, firing the Mauretania She surely is a slaver To Hell with the Mauretania The Mauretania's a a wonderful sight Sixty-four fires a-burning bright But you'll shovel coal from morning to night A-firing the Mauretania

The coal was so hard and full of slate
And that's what got to the four-to-eight
It very soon wearied the four-to-eight
A-firing the Mauretania

The eight-to-twelve were much better men But they were weary by half part ten So tired and weary by half past ten A-firing the Mauretania The fan's on the bum and fire won't draw And that's what got to the twelve-to-four It very soon buggered the twelve-to-four A-firing the Mauretania So come all you firemen, listen to me The Mauretania spells purgatory Stick to the coast, don't go deep sea A-firing the Mauretania