To The Bluenose Poem by John Beaton

With a hundred and forty feet of hull
and a quarter acre of sail,
you'd forge up under four lowers against
head seas in a fifty-knot gale
with a ballast load of Atlantic cod
and, pitching to the rail,
you'd stand on, with the strength of a church
and the heft of a breaching whale.

And never had such a spectacle graced
the Nova Scotian coast.
as your flying jib off Lunenberg.
It was Canada's pride and a boast
that our great salt banker could fly as fleet
as an ice-filled Gloucester ghost;
and you'd lead round the highflyer poles then schoon
wing and wing to the finishing-post.

But the price of the cod was crosstree high—
to harvest your Grand Banks quarry
you'd launch and loose your flying sets
and, with flambeaux lit, each dory
would anchor a mile of baited line
as its crew hallooed in the hoary
vapors that rolled from Labrador.
Then they'd lead-line for death or glory.

"They that go down to the sea in ships"
is inscribed on The Man At The Wheel
in Gloucester to mourn the five thousand drowned
in filling a continent's creel.
And in Lunenberg harbor twelve hundred names more
are dancing a stony reel
in a compass of pillars—if ever they rise,
may they climb with your top men and feel
your halyards thrum and your backstays strain
on the breakers of Banquereau
as you close-haul with a bone in your teeth
and your weather-bilge bared to the blow.