The Mary Ellen Carter

Written by the famed Stan Rogers, this song was intended as a motivational song and is credited with having saved at least one life. It has become a folk standard, performed in varying arrangements by numerous artists, and chronicles the sinking of the fictional ship Mary Ellen Carter somewhere in the North Atlantic.

Robbie led the band in singing The Mary Ellen Carter from memory in their September 2019 live stream. It was released as track 8 on Smoke + Oakum.

Factoids

In February 1983, the coastal cargo vessel Marine Electric capsized in a violent storm off the coast of Virginia. 59-year-old chief mate Robert Cusick was trapped in the deckhouse as the vessel sank. He managed to swim clear of the ship and after an hour, reached a swamped lifeboat and pulled himself aboard. Alone in freezing temperatures and with huge waves crashing over the boat, as the effects of hypothermia were setting in, he says the last refrain of "The Mary Ellen Carter" came into his mind; he began repeating the lyrics in his head, and shouting them out loud when he resurfaced after each wave, which gave him the strength to keep going until he was spotted by a helicopter at daybreak. He later commented, "I firmly believe that if it wasn't for that...I just was in the position where I couldn't have come through, and that song made the difference." This story is told by Cusick himself in the Stan Rogers documentary One Warm Line.

There are a number of candidates for the location Rogers chose for the sinking of the ship, but the two most likely are Three Mile Rock, a small coastal community on the northern peninsula of Newfoundland, or (more likely) Three Mile Rock, a known nautical hazard just off the coast of Halifax, Nova Scotia.

It has been speculated that, based on the details mentioned in the song, the ship would most likely have been a 65' coastal fishing trawler of a type common to the 1970s Canadian North Atlantic (conclusion drawn from cost and crew size); however, Rogers' biography Unfinished Conversation suggests that Mary Ellen Carter was supposed to have been a freighter.^[1]

To dog here means to fasten down an object with an item known as a "dog". There are various kinds of dog; one common type is a large iron staple that can be hammered on and later easily pried off.^[2]

Lyrics

Lyrics as provided in the Smoke + Oakum album sleeve. Rogers' original lyrics can be found here.

Oh, she went down last October in a pouring, driving rain
The skipper, he'd been drinking and the mate, he felt no pain
Out close to Three Mile Rock, and she was dealt a mortal blow
Then the Mary Ellen Carter settled low

There were just us four aboard her when she finally was awash
We worked like hell to save her, all heedless of the cost
But the groan she made as she went down, it caused us to proclaim
That the Mary Ellen Carter'd rise again

{Chorus 1}
Rise again, rise again
May her name not be lost to the knowledge of men
All those who loved her best and who were with her 'til the end
Will make the Mary Ellen Carter rise again

Well, the company wrote her off; not a nickel would they spend
She gave twenty years of service, boys, then met her sorry end
But insurance paid the loss to us, said let her rest below
Then they laughed at us and said we had to go

But we talked of her all winter, sometimes days around the clock
She's worth a quarter million, a-floating at the dock
And with every jar that hit the bar, we swore we would remain
And make the Mary Ellen Carter rise again

{Chorus}

All spring now, we've been with her on a barge lent by a friend
Three dives a day in hard-hat suit and twice I've had the bends
Thank God it's only sixty feet and the currents here are slow
Or I'd never have the strength to go below

So we patched her rents, stopped her vents
Dogged hatch and porthole down
Put cables to her, 'fore and aft, and girded her around
Tomorrow, noon, we'll hit the air and then take up the strain
And make the Mary Ellen Carter rise again

{Chorus}

Well we couldn't leave her there, you see, to crumble into scale
She'd saved our lives so many times, fighting through the gale
And the laughing, drunken rats who led her to a sorry grave
Well they won't be laughing in another day

And to you, for whom adversity has dealt its mortal blow
With smiling bastards lying to you everywhere you go
Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.

{Chorus 2}
Rise again, rise again
Though your heart it be broke and your life about to end
No matter what you've lost, be it a home, a love, a friend
Like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again

{Chorus 2}

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[1] ttps://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=35924&threadid=35924

[2] ttps://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=8054#652628

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