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AWAY SUSANNA! Fiddle: Peter Kasin

Another song from Stan Hugill's Shanties From the Seven Seas. On this recording I left out the sixth verse and put in a fiddle break in it's place. I love shanties that mention different ports and this song was especially appropriate because San Francisco is mentioned. Away, Susanna! is the shanghai version of Can't Ye Dance the Polka, the well known song about the sailor who gets drunk and is cheated out of his money and clothes.

Stan Hugill's notes about this song:

This capstan song has many versions of the words, both those of the verses and chorus, and the song probably started life in the Western Ocean Packets about the thirties or forties of the last century, when the polka reached America from Bohemia. The tune is thought to be that of an Irish air Larry Doolan, and one version does start with a verse from this ballad:

My name is Larry Doolan, Oi'm a native of the soil,
If yer want a day's diversion, bhoys,
Oi'll drive ye out in stoile

The words of the chorus give room for speculation. In my more modern first version the first lines of the chorus run: Then away Susanna, my fair maid... These words I've heard sung by Charlie Evans, a fine shantyman, one-time member of the crew of the Yankee ship William T. Lewis, by Chenoworth ex-Mount Stewart, A. Spencer, ex-Monogahela, who had learnt it from a German stevedore in 'Frisco, and many other 'modern' sailing-ship men.

The older Packet ship words were "Away you Santi, my dear honey..." or "Away you Santi, my dear Annie..."Sometimes too one would hear 'Away you Johnnie, my dear honey' or 'my fair man' (Bullen), but in the main 'Santi' was sung. Now no one has ever given a real reason, or meaning, for this word; it just appears to be a meaningless name of some sort. I thought so too, until I came across a version giving 'Away you Santa, my dear Anna' and the explanation became clear - the mysterious 'Santi' or 'Santa' being nothing more than the two first syllables or our friend 'Santi-anna' or 'Santa'anna' or, as it was usually written, 'Santiana'!

My first version of Away, Susanna was invariably sung to the 'shanghaied in San Francisco' theme. Charlie Evans, Arthur Spence, Bosun Chenoworth, 'Artie', an A.B. [able bodied seaman] of the New Zealand brigantine Aratapu, and many other shipmates of mine all sang these words. However, I believe that these verses are of comparatively recent date and that they came from a poem (the author of which I have never discovered). Probably some versatile shantyman thought them 'just the job' and spliced them to the old Packet Rat shanty. Nevertheless, they were accepted and sung by hundreds of shantymen in the latter days of sail. Every sailing-ship man I ever knew was acquainted with them.

LYRICS:

Shanghaied in San Francisco, we fetched up in Bombay They set us afloat in an old lease boat that steered like a bale of hay Full chorus: Then away, Susanna, my fair maid Oho, ye New York girls, can't ye dance the polka We panted in the tropics whilst the pitch boiled up on deck We've saved our hides, little else besides, from an ice-cold North Sea wreck We drank our rum in Portland, we've thrashed through the Behring Strait An' we toed the mark on a Yankee barque with a hard-case down-east mate We know the quays of Glasgow, an' the boom of the lone Azores We've had our grub from a salt-horse tub, condemned by the Navy stores

We know the track to Auckland an' the light of the Kinsale Head
An' we crept close-hauled while the leadsman called the depth of the channel bed

We know the streets of Santos, the river at Saigon
We've had our glass with a Chinese lass in Ship Street in Hong Kong

They'll pay us off in London, then it's oh, for a spell ashore
Then again we'll ship for a southern trip in a week or hardly more

'Tis goodbye, Sal an' Lucy, 'tis time we were afloat
With a straw-stuffed bed, an' achin' head, a knife an' an oilskin coat

Sing Time For Us To Leave Her, sing Bound For The Rio Grande
An' when the tug turns back, we'll follow her track for a last long look at the land

An' when the purple disappears an' only the blue is seen
That'll take our bones to Davy Jones an' our souls to Fiddler's Green