Old Polina

There’s a noble fleet of whalers a-sailing from Dundee,

Manned by British sailors to take them o’er the sea.

On a western ocean passage we started on the trip.

We flew along just like a song in our gallant whaling ship.

‘Twas the second Sunday morning, just after leaving port,

We met a heavy Sou’west gale that washed away our boat.

It washed away our quarterdeck, our stanchions just as well,

And so we sent the whole shebang a-floating in the gale.

CHORUS :

For the wind was on her quarter and the engine’s working free.

There’s not another whaler that sails the Arctic Sea

Can beat the Old Polina, you need not try, my sons,

For we challenged all both great and small from Dundee to St. John’s.

Art Jackman set his canvas, Fairweather got up steam,

But Captain Guy, the daring boy, came plunging through the stream.

And Mullins in the Husky tried to beat the blooming lot,

But to beat the Old Polina was something he could not.

CHORUS

There’s the noble Terra Nova, a model without doubt.

The Arctic and Aurora they talk so much about.

Art Jackman’s model mailboat, the terror of the sea,

Tried to beat the Old Polina on a passage from Dundee.

CHORUS

And now we’re back in old St. John’s where rum is very cheap.

So we’ll drink a health to Captain Guy who brought us o’er the deep.

A health to all our sweethearts and to our wives so fair.

Not another ship could make the trip but the Polina I declare.

The Aurora was built in 1876, and was a whaling ship until 1910, when it was bought by Douglas Mawson for a scientific expedition to Antarctica from 1911 to 1914. It disappeared, with all hands, in 1918.

The whaling ship Terra Nova was built in 1884, but was used for Antarctic exploration between 1894 and 1913. She returned to the Newfoundland seal fishery from 1913, until 1943, when she sank off the coast of Greenland. The crew was rescued by a US Coastguard ship.

• Pigeon Inlet Productions Archived 2006-03-08 at the Wayback Machine
• Lyrics
• The Aurora