Bonita And Bill Butler

I grew up in the scantling yards of Wheeling West Virginia

A wheelhouse cub looking for an open door

In the packet ways a Sweeney wed the keel of my Bonita

Just two months from her timbers til she moored

I paid the fare in billet on her maiden voyage to Vicksburg

And talked my way to hand the tiller on the course

In her planks I carved a notch and sealed the vow "Be my Bonita"

And her dowry was my life between the shores

I was born with rouging ways, and she steered me like a woman

From the port calls and the bawds that lead me stray

The calliope serenades, made the old towns come running

And the boys would gamble shards to pull her chains

The striker's boast would fain me loss, about the wrecks the shoals were keeping

And how the old girl's got poor Billy's ransom saved

On the lake at Bistineau, she set the wharf at Dixie

With a thousand bales of cotton on her main

As the great raft disappeared, the watermark went sinking

And she was stuck right hard, a listing on the bank

With the furnace still a blaze, I stood my last upon her

Then climbed the prow and took a landsman's trade

"A derelict now Milady" said the watch log I've concorded

"Have the bosun sound us eight bells for the change"

Cause I was born with rouging ways, and she steered me like a woman

From the port calls and the bawds that lead me stray

The calliope serenades, made the old towns come running

And the boys would gamble shards to pull her chains

And I would take to wider walks, so the gin I stopped a drinking

At three scores aloft this crooked frame

The striker's boast would fain me loss, about the wrecks the shoals were keeping

And how the old girl's got poor Billy's ransom saved