"The Ward Line" - An African American Sea Shanty That Was Collected In the Early 20th Century (YouTube Examples, Information, & Lyrics)

Lee Murdock - Topic, May 12, 2015

Provided to YouTube by CDBaby

The Lost Lake Sailors

℗ 2000 Lee Murdock
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Click https://leemurdock.com/artist-biography/ for information about the White American folk singer Lee Murdock.

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Edited by Azizi Powell

This pancocojams post showcases two YouTube examples of an African American sea shanty that comes from the North American Great Lakes area entitled "The Ward Line". ("Shanty" is also given as "chanty").

This post presents three online sources about "The Ward Line", a sea shanty (chanty) that was collected by Ivan Walton in Michigan, USA in the 1930s. One of those reprints includes the lyrics for that song.

The content of this post is presented for historical, folkloric, cultural, and aesthetic purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to Ivan Walton, the collector of this song and thanks to the composers of this sea shanty whose names aren't known. Thanks to all those who are featured in these YouTube examples and thanks to the publishers of these videos. Thanks also to all those who are quoted in this post.   
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"Shanties" ("Chanties") are a category of work songs that many people nowadays mistakenly think applied only to sailors onboard sailing vessels. However, this song documents that shanties were also sung by Black male laborers who loaded and emptied cargo in the holds of sailing vessels when those vessels were at their ports. 

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Shanties (Chanties) were a cappella songs. The lyrics to "The Ward Line" sea shanty includes what I consider to be a mild example of profanity ("God damn your soul"). While I usually use modified spelling for profanity in this blog, these words are given with no modification. 
 
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Information about the North American Great Lakes is given in this post's comment section below.

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SHOWCASE VIDEO #2 - THE WARD LINE.mov

bell8541, Feb 12, 2011

African-American Great Lakes chantey collected by Ivan Walton in the early 20th century. Known on both sides of the lakes. The vessel "Old Black Sam" mentioned in the song is the steamer Sam Ward which was worked out of Detroit in the 1850s. There are a lot more verses than I sang here. The tune in the middle is "Kick Up De Debblel On A Holiday" from Brigg's Banjo instructor of about that era. Played on a homemade gut-strung fretless banjo.

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COMPLETE REPRINT #1
From https://www.judybwebdesign.com/handspikes/cast_off/coel_lyrics/ka03wardline.htm

THE WARD LINE

Lead: Peter

copy of CD cover with link to CD home page

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".
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No information is given on this page about the author and title of this reprinted material. Here's information about the book that is mentioned in these notes:
From https://www.amazon.com/Windjammers-Songs-Great-Lakes-Sailors/dp/0814329977 "Windjammers: Songs of the Great Lakes Sailors" (Great Lakes Books) Paperback – February 1, 2002 by Ivan H. Walton (Author), Joe Grimm (Author)

"White-winged schooners once dominated commerce and culture on the Great Lakes, and songs relieved the hours on board, but that way of life and its music ended when steam-driven mechanical boats swept schooners from the inland seas. Recognizing in the late 1930s, almost too late, that this rich oral tradition was going to the grave along with the last generation of schoonermen, Ivan H. Walton undertook a quest to save the songs of the Great Lakes sailors. Racing time and its ravages, he searched out ancient mariners in lakefront hospitals, hangouts, and watering holes. Walton reconstructed songs from one of the most colorful periods in American history, discovering melodies and lyrics to more than a hundred songs. With its stories, lyrics, musical scores by folksinger/historian Lee Murdock, and accompanying CD, Windjammers ensures that sailing chanteys that have not been heard for over one hundred years can be heard again and again far into the future. "

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PARTIAL REPRINT #2
From https://wayne.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/wayne-open/id/3637/rec/46

"Object Description

Title  Songquest: the journals of Great Lakes folklorist Ivan H. Walton

Creators               Walton, Ivan

Contributors      Grimm, Joe

Sommers, Laurie Kay

Description        

Ivan H. Walton was a pioneering folklorist who collected the songs and stories of aging sailors living along the shores of the Great Lakes in the 1930s. His collection is unique in the annals of Great Lakes folklore. It began as a search for songs but broadened into a collection of weather signs, shipboard beliefs, greenhorn tales, and stories of the intense rivalry between sailors and the steamboat men who replaced them. Edited by Joe Grimm, Songquest: The Journals of Great Lakes Folklorist Ivan H. Walton is a selection from the daily journals Walton wrote during his travels as a folklore collector. It is clear that Walton, a professor of English at the University of Michigan, both admired the sailors of the Great Lakes for what they had done during their working years and worried about them as they entered the twilight of their lives. Walton went beyond the songs he set out to find and captured the pitch and roll of the Great Lakes alive with white-winged schooners. His writings provide a clear picture of the colorful individuals he met and interviewed captains, cabin boys, tugmen, chandlers, boardinghouse owners, dredgers, and light keepers. Walton also documented the methods he used and recorded his personal thoughts about his nomadic life and the events going on around him during the 1930s, including the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt’Ss election, and the end of Prohibition.

Note     

The publication of this volume in a freely accessible digital format has been made possible by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Mellon Foundation through their Humanities Open Book Program.; Contains 54 black and white illustrations; Joe Grimm is editor of Windjammers: Songs of the Great Lakes Sailors and of Michigan Voices: Our State’s History in the Words of the People Who Lived It.

[…]

Creation Date     2005

Publisher     Wayne State University Press"...

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COMPLETE REPRINT #3
From https://www.reddit.com/r/seashanties/comments/n0of1g/the_ward_line_a_largely_unknown_shanty_from_the/

r/seashanties

FunnelV, OP (Original Poster), 2021
"The Ward Line - A largely unknown shanty from the Great Lakes

This is my first post in this sub, but for my first post I present you something that is a bit different/a bit of an oddball. This shanty is called "The Ward Line" which originated from the Great Lakes. It isn't the typical "hauling ropes and lines" type of shanty since it originated on steamers, but it did also carry over to the traditional lake schooners of the time.

The Ward Line is a shanty that originates from black sailors during the abolition era, the "Ward Line" in question refers to the shipping lane often traversed by the "Sam Ward", a paddle steamer that operated on the Great Lakes during the time. It should be mentioned the Sam Ward was in no way associated with New York and Cuba Mail Steamship Company, which was also known as The Ward Line.

The history around this shanty is something I am not quite up to speed on as Great Lakes maritime history often needs to be pieced together since it isn't studied nearly as extensively as oceangoing seafaring history, but what I do know is that during the time leading up to and around abolition escaped slaves were often offered positions on Great Lakes vessels in exchange for pay to settle in a free state or a safe passage to Canada, and they brought their musical style to the Freshwater Seas along with them (similar cultural effect can also be seen with some other well-known shanties like Nelson's Blood/Roll The Old Chariot Along).

The Ward Line was primarily a loading/unloading and dockhand shanty, however it was also sung by crews doing general routine labor while out on the lakes.

I am bringing some attention to this shanty because it's been largely lost to time to the point it is often overlooked by the hardcore maritime history community (even the ones who specialize on the Great Lakes) and has some interesting history behind it.

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Reply 
AgitatedRestaurant96, 2021
"I live right on Lake Ontario! That’s cool to know!"

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Reply
FunnelV, 2021
"I live in Wisconsin and a couple hours away from Lake Michigan, going to the Lakes has always been one of my favorite things and I am fascinated by Great Lakes maritime history and lore and it's something I'd like to see more studied. Most people seem to know about the Fitzgerald and how rough the Lakes can often get (largely due to Lightfoot's song) but not much else. Indeed there was a time when sails towered over the Great Lakes and shanties could be heard at the docks, and I am glad I can present a piece of mostly-forgotten history.."

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Reply
kfward223, 2024
"I’m actually a distant relative of Sam Ward. He is a many times great uncle. It’s pretty cool to hear a shanty that was sang on the ship even had the name of the ship (the Sam Ward steamer was nicknamed “old black Sam” because of the distinctive paint job.) thanks for sharing!"

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