The Bob Zentz Songbook: Sea Dream

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The Bob Zentz Songbook

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Sea Dream

From Closehauled on the Wind of a Dream

Adapted from the poetry of C. Fox Smith (1882-1954)

1. Why did I dream last night, I wonder, about the ship Ledore (A-E-A-D-A-E)
I made a passage in from China, ‘eighty-three or four (A-E-A-D-A-E)
And left in the East India Basin, and after saw no more (D-E-A-D-A-E-A)

2. I dreamed we were off the Pescadores, waiting a breeze from the land
There were some fishing junks becalmed there, nets laid out on the sand
The sun had left the sky one glory, the sea was as flat as your hand

3. It was just like looking at a picture, I saw it all so clear
Little things long since forgotten about her rig and her gear
And shipmates’ faces I hadn’t thought of for many and many’s the year

4. I could see them all as plain as daylight, then some fellow spoke
"Here comes the wind!" he said, “by thunder;” the sea around us broke
Into a hundred thousand wrinkles, and from that dream I woke

5. There was nothing much in the way about her, so far as I recall
She wasn’t out of common handsome, or fast or smart or tall
There was no one in that crowd to remember, they was chaps like most, that’s all

6. And we’d nothing much in the way of weather out of the usual kind
And the times we had, they were like most times, the good, the bad combined
And nothing ever happened aboard her to make her stick in your mind

7. Just the same old rounds of sailorizing that all us shellbacks know
The hauling on the sheets and braces in the doldrums to and fro
The old jobs aloft in the Tropics where those good warm trade-winds blow

8. Reefing, furling, wheel and lookout, shifting, bending sail
Tallying on to the topsail halyards, or snugging down for a gale
An old song in the dog-watches, some old seaman’s tale

9. Well, I left with never a look behind me, glad to leave her too

When we made her fast in the dock basin, and the mate says, “That’ll do!”
But it’s strange I should have dreamed about her, of all those ships I knew
But it’s strange I should have dreamed about her, of all the ships I knew

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