58 - The Mary Ellen Carter
Words by © Stan RogersTune by © Stan Rogers
A song about a sunken ship, but also about hope and common humanity, and triumph over adversity.
This song has literally saved lives. On February 12, 1983 the ship Marine Electric was carrying a load of coal from Norfolk, Virginia to a power station in Somerset, Massachusetts. The worst storm in forty years blew up that night, and the ship sank at about four o'clock in the morning on February 13. The ship's chief mate, 59-year-old Robert M. "Bob" Cusick, was trapped in the deckhouse as the ship went down. His snorkeling experience helped him avoid panic and swim to the surface, but he was left to spend the night alone on a partially deflated lifeboat he eventually reached, in water barely above freezing and air much colder. Huge seas washed over him, and each time he was not sure that he would ever reach the surface again to breathe. Battling hypothermia, he was tempted to allow himself to fall unconscious and be washed away. Just then he remembered the concluding stanzas of "The Mary Ellen Carter".
As Cusick tells in One Warm Line, a documentary about Rogers, he started to sing it and soon was alternately shouting out "Rise again, rise again" and holding his breath as the seas washed over him. At seven o'clock that morning a Coast Guard helicopter spotted him and pulled him to safety. Only three men of the thirty-four who had been aboard survived the wreck. After his ordeal, Cusick wrote a letter to Stan Rogers telling him what had happened and crediting the song with saving his life. In response, Rogers invited Cusick to attend what turned out to be the second-to-last concert Rogers ever performed. Cusick lived another 30 years, and his testimony and activism in the aftermath of the accident spurred far-reaching maritime safety reforms. wikipedia
Oh, she went down last October in a pouring, driving rain
The skipper, he’d been drinking, and the mate, he felt no pain
How close to Three Mile Rock, and she was dealt her 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
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 till the end
Will make the Mary Ellen Carter rise again!
Well, the comp’ny wrote her off, not a nickel would they spend
She gave 20 years of service, boys, and met a sorry end
But insurance paid the loss to us, said “Let her rest below”
Then they laughed at us, said we had to go
But we talked of her all winter, sometimes days around the clock
She’s worth a quarter million afloatin’ at the dock
And with every jar that hit the bar we swore we would remain
And make the Mary Ellen Carter rise again
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 till the end
Will make the Mary Ellen Carter rise again!
All spring now we’ve been with her on a barge lent by a friend
Three dives a day in a hard hat suit and twice I’ve had the bends
Thank God it’s only 60 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
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 till the end
Will make the Mary Ellen Carter rise again!
Well, we couldn’t leave her there, you see, to crumble into scale
She’d saved our lives so many times fightin’ 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
We’re 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
Rise again, rise again!
Though your heart it be broke and your life about to end
No matter what you lost, be it a home, a love, a friend
Like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again!
Rise again, rise again!
Though your heart it be broke and your life about to end
No matter what you lost, be it a home, a love, a friend
Like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again!