As I lean against the windswept rock, a memory comes to me
of the days I spent on "The Courage Son" and the friends I lost at sea.
The Courage Son was a sturdy ship, built of solid oak,
it moved along on God's sweet wind , not on steam or smoke.
The crew that manned this vessel strong, were the dearest friends I've known.
But they didn't live to tell the tale or reap the seeds they'd sown.
The bravest of men shall never return from the ocean home they've won,
but I the lone survivor will remember what they've done.
On the 23rd day of January, in Eighteen Forty-nine,
the men and I were down below sharing bread and wine.
When a storm came up the likes of which none had ever seen.
The sails were soon a tangled mass and the ship began to lean.
The heavens seemed a sheet of black with cracks of blinding light,
a mast was struck and hit my head destroying my sense of sight.
While my friends were scrambling fore and aft with a speed propelled by fear,
my life was saved by a brave young man by the name of Samuel Wier.
He led me to a lifeboat filled with food and gear,
enough to last a single man for six months of a year.
I felt my body carried and lowered in a boat
I realized without my sight, that I'd now been put afloat.
I couldn't see the reasoning, for the pain had blurred my head
I was rolled and tossed so very close, to finally being dead.
The waves that banged against the boat made it hard for me to hear
the fire raging on the ship and screams that stemmed from fear.
My boat was adrift for hours before, The Courage Son went down,
I pictured the sea opening wide to accept her oaken gown.
I was rescued by a freighter just off a foreign coast
white and ill with fever I looked a certain ghost.
Now it's just my old white cane and the smells of the open sea
that recall the storm the devil sent and what it took from me.
Copyright .....W.H.Colegate