But although I’m able-bodied, and still fit to furl a “topsel,” Or to reef a “maintop-gallant” in a stiff nor’-eastern gale: Though I’m sober and quick-handed, yet just like a hulk I’m stranded, And I cannot get a skipper for to answer to my hail. So as no one me engages, Why, of course, my bit o’ wages I’d saved up for a rainy day is bound to quickly go; And my hopes, I own, is sinking, For I somehow can’t help thinking That I shan’t get the chance again to sing out “Yo, heave ho!” Yes, the times is changed completely since I first sailed on the ocean, For then a British ship, you see, was worked by British tars, And every British skipper would have scoffed the very notion Of having lots of furriners to man the capstan bars. But now, I’ll take my davy, ’Cepting sometimes in the Navy, You will not find a British ship in which they do not stow Heaps o’ Danes, and Swedes, and Rooshians, Greeks, Malays, and Fins, and Prooshians, Who couldn’t, for to save their lives sing out a “Yo, heave ho!” Why, the crews I used to ship with were all chaps with bone and muscle, And with lots o’ pluck and courage, and with hearts to England true; But what some calls “competition” has so changed the whole position, That now to serve for sailors any furrin’ scum will do. And if a crew you muster, P’rhaps of English there’s a cluster, But there’s Chinamen and Lascars, and there’s Coolies in a row, All a-chattering in their lingo, ’Till it’s precious hard, by jingo, To hear aboard a British ship the good old “Yo, heave ho!” They say I shouldn’t grumble, seeing that which I complain of Is all owing, as they tell us, to, “a known commercial cause”; But it’s not much consolation to a chap what fears starvation To tell him that his suff’ring’s due to “economic laws,” With such things I cannot wrestle, But I know a British vessel Is very, very different to what ’twas years ago; Since its crew now as a rule is, Three parts furriners and Coolies With scarcely British tars enough to give a “Yo, heave ho!”