Stan Roger 1978
“Priscilla Herdman may have touched this one off. Certainly it was at her urging that the Bermuda Folk Club first brought me in for a concert, and I was so impressed with the beauty of the place, and its long, rich history that I just had to write a song. This one is rather hard to sing, at least at the tempo I do it at. Get a good breath before each chorus, and a short one after the world ‘coal’. In the verses you are on your own.”
Chorus: He was the Captain of the Nightingale Twenty-one days from Clyde in coal He could smell the flowers of Bermuda in the gale When he died on the North Rock Shoal Just five short hours from Bermuda in a fine October gale There came a cry Oh, there be breakers dead ahead from the collier Nightingale No sooner had the Captain brought her round, came a rending crash below Hard on her beam ends, groaning, went the Nightingale and overside her mainmast blows “Oh, Captain, are we all for drowning?”came the cry from all the crew! “The boats be smashed! How then are we all to be saved? They are stove in through and through!” “Oh, are ye brave and hardy collier men or are ye blind and cannot see? The Captain’s gig still lies before ye whole and sound, it shall carry all o’ we.” But when the crew was all assembled and the gig prepared for sea, ‘Twas seen there were but eighteen places to be manned, nineteen mortal souls were we. But cries the Captain “Now do not delay, nor do ye spare a thought for me. My duty is to save ye all now, if I can; see ye return as quick as can be.” Oh, there be flowers in Bermuda. Beauty lies on every hand, And there be laughter, ease and drink for every man, but there is no joy for me; For when we reached the wretched Nightingale what an awful sight was plain. The Captain, drowned, was tangled in the mizzen-chains smiling bravely beneath the sea.