Make And Break Harbour

How still lies the bay, in the light western airs

Which blow from the crimson horizon

Once more we tack home, with a dry empty hold

Saving gas with the breezes so fair

She's a kindly cape islander, old but still sound

But so lost in the long liner's shadow

Make and Break and make do, but the fish are so few

That she won't be replaced should she founder

Now its so hard to not think of before the big war

When the cod went so cheap, but so plenty

Foreign trawlers go by now with long seeking eyes

Taking all where we seldom take any

And the young folk don't stay with the fisherman's ways

Long ago they all moved to the cities

And the ones left behind old and tired and blind

Won't work for a pound, for a penny.

In Make and Break Harbour the boats are so few

Too many are pulled up and rotten.

Most houses stand empty, old nets hung to dry

Are blown away lost and forgotten

Now I can see the big draggers have stirred up the bay

Leaving lobster traps smashed on the bottom

Can they think it don't pay to respect the old ways

That make and break men have not forgotten

For we still keep our time to the turn of the tide

In this boat that I built with my father

Still lifts to the sky, the "one lunger" and I

Still talk like old friends on the water